Interpretation of Dreams E-book
Author: Sigmund Freud
Genre: Biology / Medicine, Science
1900
THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
by Sigmund Freud
translated by A. A. Brill
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION
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WHEREAS there was a space of nine years between the first and second
editions of this book, the need of a third edition was apparent when
little more than a year had elapsed. I ought to be gratified by this
change; but if I was unwilling previously to attribute the neglect
of my work to its small value, I cannot take the interest which is now
making its appearance as proof of its quality.
The advance of scientific knowledge has not left The
Interpretation of Dreams untouched. When I wrote this book in 1899
there was as yet no "sexual theory," and the analysis of the more
complicated forms of the psychoneuroses was still in its infancy.
The interpretation of dreams was intended as an expedient to
facilitate the psychological analysis of the neuroses; but since
then a profounder understanding of the neuroses has contributed
towards the comprehension of the dream. The doctrine of
dream-interpretation itself has evolved in a direction which was
insufficiently emphasized in the first edition of this book. From my
own experience, and the works of Stekel and other writers, * I have
since learned to appreciate more accurately the significance of
symbolism in dreams (or rather, in unconscious thought). In the course
of years, a mass of data has accumulated which demands
consideration. I have endeavored to deal with these innovations by
interpolations in the text and footnotes. If these additions do not
always quite adjust themselves to the framework of the treatise, or if
the earlier text does not everywhere come up to the standard of our
present knowledge, I must beg indulgence for this deficiency, since it
is only the result and indication of the increasingly rapid advance of
our science. I will even venture to predict the directions in which
further editions of this book- should there be a demand for them-
may diverge from previous editions. Dream-interpretation must seek a
closer union with the rich material of poetry, myth, and popular
idiom, and it must deal more faithfully than has hitherto been
possible with the relations of dreams to the neuroses and to mental
derangement.
Herr Otto Rank has afforded me valuable assistance in the
selection of supplementary examples, and has revised the proofs of
this edition. I have to thank him and many other colleagues for
their contributions and corrections.
Vienna, 1911
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* Omitted in subsequent editions.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND (GERMAN) EDITION
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THAT there should have been a demand for a second edition of this
book- a book which cannot be described as easy to read- before the
completion of its first decade is not to be explained by the
interest of the professional circles to which I was addressing myself.
My psychiatric colleagues have not, apparently, attempted to look
beyond the astonishment which may at first have been aroused by my
novel conception of the dream; and the professional philosophers,
who are anyhow accustomed to disposing of the dream in a few
sentences- mostly the same- as a supplement to the states of
consciousness, have evidently failed to realize that precisely in this
connection it was possible to make all manner of deductions, such as
must lead to a fundamental modification of our psychological
doctrines. The attitude of the scientific reviewers was such to lead
me to expect that the fate of the book would be to fall into oblivion;
and the little flock of faithful adherents, who follow my lead in
the therapeutic application of psycho-analysis, and interpret dreams
by my method, could not have exhausted the first edition of this book.
I feel, therefore, that my thanks are due to the wider circle of
cultured and inquiring readers whose sympathy has induced me, after
the lapse of nine years, once more to take up this difficult work,
which has so many fundamental bearings.
I am glad to be able to say that I found little in the book that
called for alteration. Here and there I have interpolated fresh
material, or have added opinions based on more extensive experience,
or I have sought to elaborate individual points; but the essential
passages treating of dreams and their interpretation, and the
psychological doctrines to be deduced therefrom, have been left
unaltered; subjectively, at all events, they have stood the test of
time. Those who are acquainted with my other writings (on the
aetiology and mechanism of the psychoneuroses) will know that I
never offer unfinished work as finished, and that I have always
endeavoured to revise my conclusions in accordance with my maturing
opinions; but as regards the subject of the dream-life, I am able to
stand by my original text. In my many years' work upon the problems of
the neuroses I have often hesitated, and I have often gone astray; and
then it was always the interpretation of dreams that restored my
self-confidence. My many scientific opponents are actuated by a wise
instinct when they decline to follow me into the region of oneirology.
Even the material of this book, even my own dreams, defaced by
time or superseded, by means of which I have demonstrated the rules of
dream-interpretation, revealed, when I came to revise these pages, a
continuity that resisted revision. For me, of course, this book has an
additional subjective significance, which I did not understand until
after its completion. It reveals itself to me as a piece of my
self-analysis, as my reaction to the death of my father, that is, to
the most important event, the most poignant loss in a man's life. Once
I had realized this, I felt that I could not obliterate the traces
of this influence. But to my readers the material from which they
learn to evaluate and interpret dreams will be a matter of
indifference.
Where an inevitable comment could not be fitted into the old
context, I have indicated by square brackets that it does not occur in
the first edition. *
Berchtesgaden, 1908
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* Omitted in subsequent editions.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
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IN this volume I have attempted to expound the methods and results
of dream-interpretation; and in so doing I do not think I have
overstepped the boundary of neuro-pathological science. For the
dream proves on psychological investigation to be the first of a
series of abnormal psychic formations, a series whose succeeding
members- the hysterical phobias, the obsessions, the delusions-
must, for practical reasons, claim the attention of the physician. The
dream, as we shall see, has no title to such practical importance, but
for that very reason its theoretical value as a typical formation is
all the greater, and the physician who cannot explain the origin of
dream-images will strive in vain to understand the phobias and the
obsessive and delusional ideas, or to influence them by therapeutic
methods.
But the very context to which our subject owes its importance must
be held responsible for the deficiencies of the following chapters.
The abundant lacunae in this exposition represent so many points of
contact at which the problem of dream-formation is linked up with
the more comprehensive problems of psycho-pathology; problems which
cannot be treated in these pages, but which, if time and powers
suffice and if further material presents itself, may be elaborated
elsewhere.
The peculiar nature of the material employed to exemplify the
interpretation of dreams has made the writing even of this treatise
a difficult task. Consideration of the methods of dream-interpretation
will show why the dreams recorded in the literature on the subject, or
those collected by persons unknown to me, were useless for my purpose;
I had only the choice between my own dreams and those of the
patients whom I was treating by psychoanalytic methods. But this later
material was inadmissible, since the dream-processes were
undesirably complicated by the intervention of neurotic characters.
And if I relate my own dreams I must inevitably reveal to the gaze
of strangers more of the intimacies of my psychic life than is
agreeable to me, and more than seems fitting in a writer who is not
a poet but a scientific investigator. To do so is painful, but
unavoidable; I have submitted to the necessity, for otherwise I
could not have demonstrated my psychological conclusions. Sometimes,
of course, I could not resist the temptation to mitigate my
indiscretions by omissions and substitutions; but wherever I have done
so the value of the example cited has been very definitely diminished.
I can only express the hope that my readers will understand my
difficult position, and will be indulgent; and further, that all those
persons who are in any way concerned in the dreams recorded will not
seek to forbid our dream-life at all events to exercise freedom of
thought!
I. THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE OF DREAM-PROBLEMS (UP TO 1900)
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IN the following pages I shall demonstrate that there is a
psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams,
and that on the application of this technique every dream will
reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance,
and one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic
activities of the waking state. Further, I shall endeavour to
elucidate the processes which underlie the strangeness and obscurity
of dreams, and to deduce from these processes the nature of the
psychic forces whose conflict or cooperation is responsible for our
dreams. This done, my investigation will terminate, as it will have
reached the point where the problem of the dream merges into more
comprehensive problems, and to solve these we must have recourse to
material of a different kind.
I shall begin by giving a short account of the views of earlier
writers on this subject, and of the status of the dream-problem in
contemporary science; since in the course of this treatise I shall not
often have occasion to refer to either. In spite of thousands of years
of endeavour, little progress has been made in the scientific
understanding of dreams. This fact has been so universally
acknowledged by previous writers on the subject that it seems hardly
necessary to quote individual opinions. The reader will find, in the
works listed at the end of this work, many stimulating observations,
and plenty of interesting material relating to our subject, but little
or nothing that concerns the true nature of the dream, or that
solves definitely any of its enigmas. The educated layman, of
course, knows even less of the matter.
The conception of the dream that was held in prehistoric ages by
primitive peoples, and the influence which it may have exerted on
the formation of their conceptions of the universe, and of the soul,
is a theme of such great interest that it is only with reluctance that
I refrain from dealing with it in these pages. I will refer the reader
to the well-known works of Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury), Herbert
Spencer, E. B. Tylor, and other writers; I will only add that we shall
not realize the importance of these problems and speculations until we
have completed the task of dream-interpretation that lies before us.
A reminiscence of the concept of the dream that was held in
primitive times seems to underlie the evaluation of the dream which
was current among the peoples of classical antiquity. * They took it
for granted that dreams were related to the world of the
supernatural beings in whom they believed, and that they brought
inspirations from the gods and demons. Moreover, it appeared to them
that dreams must serve a special purpose in respect of the dreamer;
that, as a rule, they predicted the future. The extraordinary
variations in the content of dreams, and in the impressions which they
produced on the dreamer, made it, of course, very difficult to
formulate a coherent conception of them, and necessitated manifold
differentiations and group-formations, according to their value and
reliability. The valuation of dreams by the individual philosophers of
antiquity naturally depended on the importance which they were
prepared to attribute to manticism in general.
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* The following remarks are based on Buchsenschutz's careful
essay, Traum und Traumdeutung im Altertum (Berlin 1868).
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In the two works of Aristotle in which there is mention of dreams,
they are already regarded as constituting a problem of psychology.
We are told that the dream is not god-sent, that it is not of divine
but of demonic origin. For nature is really demonic, not divine;
that is to say, the dream is not a supernatural revelation, but is
subject to the laws of the human spirit, which has, of course, a
kinship with the divine. The dream is defined as the psychic
activity of the sleeper, inasmuch as he is asleep. Aristotle was
acquainted with some of the characteristics of the dream-life; for
example, he knew that a dream converts the slight sensations perceived
in sleep into intense sensations ("one imagines that one is walking
through fire, and feels hot, if this or that part of the body
becomes only quite slightly warm"), which led him to conclude that
dreams might easily betray to the physician the first indications of
an incipient physical change which escaped observation during the
day. *
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* The relationship between dreams and disease is discussed by
Hippocrates in a chapter of his famous work.
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As has been said, those writers of antiquity who preceded
Aristotle did not regard the dream as a product of the dreaming
psyche, but as an inspiration of divine origin, and in ancient times
the two opposing tendencies which we shall find throughout the ages in
respect of the evaluation of the dream-life were already
perceptible. The ancients distinguished between the true and
valuable dreams which were sent to the dreamer as warnings, or to
foretell future events, and the vain, fraudulent, and empty dreams
whose object was to misguide him or lead him to destruction.
Gruppe * speaks of such a classification of dreams, citing Macrobius
and Artemidorus: "Dreams were divided into two classes; the first
class was believed to be influenced only by the present (or the past),
and was unimportant in respect of the future; it included the
enuknia (insomnia), which directly reproduce a given idea or its
opposite; e.g., hunger or its satiation; and the phantasmata, which
elaborate the given idea phantastically, as e.g. the nightmare,
ephialtes. The second class of dreams, on the other hand, was
determinative of the future. To this belonged:
1. Direct prophecies received in the dream (chrematismos,
oraculum);
2. the foretelling of a future event (orama, visio);
3. the symbolic dream, which requires interpretation (oneiros,
somnium.)
This theory survived for many centuries."
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* Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, p. 390.
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Connected with these varying estimations of the dream was the
problem of "dream-interpretation." Dreams in general were expected
to yield important solutions, but not every dream was immediately
understood, and it was impossible to be sure that a certain
incomprehensible dream did not really foretell something of
importance, so that an effort was made to replace the incomprehensible
content of the dream by something that should be at once
comprehensible and significant. In later antiquity Artemidorus of
Daldis was regarded as the greatest authority on dream-interpretation.
His comprehensive works must serve to compensate us for the lost works
of a similar nature. * The pre-scientific conception of the dream
which obtained among the ancients was, of course, in perfect keeping
with their general conception of the universe, which was accustomed to
project as an external reality that which possessed reality only in
the life of the psyche. Further, it accounted for the main
impression made upon the waking life by the morning memory of the
dream; for in this memory the dream, as compared with the rest of
the psychic content, seems to be something alien, coming, as it
were, from another world. It would be an error to suppose that
theory of the supernatural origin of dreams lacks followers even in
our own times; for quite apart from pietistic and mystical writers-
who cling, as they are perfectly justified in doing, to the remnants
of the once predominant realm of the supernatural until these remnants
have been swept away by scientific explanation- we not infrequently
find that quite intelligent persons, who in other respects are
averse from anything of a romantic nature, go so far as to base
their religious belief in the existence and co-operation of superhuman
spiritual powers on the inexplicable nature of the phenomena of dreams
(Haffner). The validity ascribed to the dream-life by certain
schools of philosophy- for example, by the school of Schelling- is a
distinct reminiscence of the undisputed belief in the divinity of
dreams which prevailed in antiquity; and for some thinkers the
mantic or prophetic power of dreams is still a subject of debate. This
is due to the fact that the explanations attempted by psychology are
too inadequate to cope with the accumulated material, however strongly
the scientific thinker may feel that such superstitious doctrines
should be repudiated.
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* For the later history of dream-interpretation in the Middle Ages
consult Diepgen, and the special investigations of M. Forster,
Gotthard, and others. The interpretation of dreams among the Jews
has been studied by Amoli, Amram, and Lowinger, and recently, with
reference to the psycho-analytic standpoint, by Lauer. Details of
the Arabic methods of dream-interpretation are furnished by Drexl,
F. Schwarz, and the missionary Tfinkdji. The interpretation of
dreams among the Japanese has been investigated by Miura and Iwaya,
among the Chinese by Secker, and among the Indians by Negelein.
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To write strongly the history of our scientific knowledge of the
dream-problem is extremely difficult, because, valuable though this
knowledge may be in certain respects, no real progress in a definite
direction is as yet discernible. No real foundation of verified
results has hitherto been established on which future investigators
might continue to build. Every new author approaches the same problems
afresh, and from the very beginning. If I were to enumerate such
authors in chronological order, giving a survey of the opinions
which each has held concerning the problems of the dream, I should
be quite unable to draw a clear and complete picture of the present
state of our knowledge on the subject. I have therefore preferred to
base my method of treatment on themes rather than on authors, and in
attempting the solution of each problem of the dream I shall cite
the material found in the literature of the subject.
But as I have not succeeded in mastering the whole of this
literature- for it is widely dispersed, and interwoven with the
literature of other subjects- I must ask my readers to rest content
with my survey as it stands, provided that no fundamental fact or
important point of view has been overlooked.
Until recently most authors have been inclined to deal with the
subjects of sleep and dreams in conjunction, and together with these
they have commonly dealt with analogous conditions of a
psycho-pathological nature, and other dream-like phenomena, such as
hallucinations, visions, etc. In recent works, on the other hand,
there has been a tendency to keep more closely to the theme, and to
consider, as a special subject, the separate problems of the
dream-life. In this change I should like to perceive an expression
of the growing conviction that enlightenment and agreement in such
obscure matters may be attained only by a series of detailed
investigations. Such a detailed investigation, and one of a special
psychological nature, is expounded in these pages. I have had little
occasion to concern myself with the problem of sleep, as this is
essentially a physiological problem, although the changes in the
functional determination of the psychic apparatus should be included
in a description of the sleeping state. The literature of sleep will
therefore not be considered here.
A scientific interest in the phenomena of dreams as such leads us to
propound the following problems, which to a certain extent,
interdependent, merge into one another.
A. The Relation of the Dream to the Waking State
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The naive judgment of the dreamer on waking assumes that the
dream- even if it does not come from another world- has at all
events transported the dreamer into another world. The old
physiologist, Burdach, to whom we are indebted for a careful and
discriminating description of the phenomena of dreams, expressed
this conviction in a frequently quoted passage (p. 474): "The waking
life, with its trials and joys, its pleasures and pains, is never
repeated; on the contrary, the dream aims at relieving us of these.
Even when our whole mind is filled with one subject, when our hearts
are rent by bitter grief, or when some task has been taxing our mental
capacity to the utmost, the dream either gives us something entirely
alien, or it selects for its combinations only a few elements of
reality; or it merely enters into the key of our mood, and
symbolizes reality." J. H. Fichte (I. 541) speaks in precisely the
same sense of supplementary dreams, calling them one of the secret,
self-healing benefits of the psyche. L. Strumpell expresses himself to
the same effect in his Natur und Entstehung der Traume, a study
which is deservedly held in high esteem. "He who dreams turns his back
upon the world of waking consciousness" (p. 16); "In the dream the
memory of the orderly content of waking consciousness and its normal
behaviour is almost entirely lost" (p. 17); "The almost complete and
unencumbered isolation of the psyche in the dream from the regular
normal content and course of the waking state..." (p. 19).
Yet the overwhelming majority of writers on the subject have adopted
the contrary view of the relation of the dream to waking life. Thus
Haffner (p. 19): "To begin with, the dream continues the waking
life. Our dreams always connect themselves with such ideas as have
shortly before been present in our consciousness. Careful
examination will nearly always detect a thread by which the dream
has linked itself to the experiences of the previous day." Weygandt
(p. 6) flatly contradicts the statement of Burdach. "For it may
often be observed, apparently indeed in the great majority of
dreams, that they lead us directly back into everyday life, instead of
releasing us from it." Maury (p. 56) expresses the same idea in a
concise formula: "Nous revons de ce que nous avons vu, dit, desire, ou
fait." * Jessen, in his Psychologie, published in 1855 (p. 530), is
rather more explicit: "The content of dreams is always more or less
determined by the personality, the age, sex, station in life,
education and habits, and by the events and experiences of the whole
past life of the individual."
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* We dream of what we have seen, said, desired, or done.
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The philosopher, I. G. E. Maas, adopts the most unequivocal attitude
in respect of this question (Uber die Leidenschaften, 1805):
"Experience corroborates our assertion that we dream most frequently
of those things toward which our warmest passions are directed. This
shows us that our passions must influence the generation of our
dreams. The ambitious man dreams of the laurels which he has won
(perhaps only in imagination), or has still to win, while the lover
occupies himself, in his dreams, with the object of his dearest
hopes.... All the sensual desires and loathings which slumber in the
heart, if they are stimulated by any cause, may combine with other
ideas and give rise to a dream; or these ideas may mingle in an
already existing dream." *
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* Communicated by Winterstein to the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse.
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The ancients entertained the same idea concerning the dependence
of the dream-content on life. I will quote Radestock (p. 139): "When
Xerxes, before his expedition against Greece, was dissuaded from his
resolution by good counsel, but was again and again incited by
dreams to undertake it, one of the old, rational dream-interpreters of
the Persians, Artabanus, told him, and very appropriately, that
dream-images for the most part contain that of which one has been
thinking in the waking state."
In the didactic poem of Lucretius, On the Nature of Things (IV.
962), there occurs this passage:
"Et quo quisque fere studio devinctus adhaeret, aut quibus in
rebus multum sumus ante morati atque in ea ratione fuit contenta magis
mens, in somnis eadem plerumque videmur obire; causidici causas
agere et componere leges, induperatores pugnare ac proelia
obire,"... etc., etc. * Cicero (De Divinatione, II. LXVII) says, in
a similar strain, as does also Maury many centuries later:
"Maximeque 'reliquiae' rerum earum moventur in animis et agitantur, de
quibus vigilantes aut cogitavimus aut egimus." *(2)
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* And whatever be the pursuit to which one clings with devotion,
whatever the things on which we have been occupied much in the past,
the mind being thus more intent upon that pursuit, it is generally the
same things that we seem to encounter in dreams; pleaders to plead
their cause and collate laws, generals to contend and engage battle.
*(2) And especially the "remnant" of our waking thoughts and deeds
move and stir within the soul.
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The contradiction between these two views concerning the relation
between dream life and waking life seems indeed irresolvable. Here
we may usefully cite the opinion of F. W. Hildebrandt (1875), who held
that on the whole the peculiarities of the dream can only be described
as "a series of contrasts which apparently amount to contradictions"
(p. 8). "The first of these contrasts is formed by the strict
isolation or seclusion of the dream from true and actual life on the
one hand, and on the other hand by the continuous encroachment of
the one upon the other, and the constant dependence of the one upon
the other. The dream is something absolutely divorced from the reality
experienced during the waking state; one may call it an existence
hermetically sealed up and insulated from real life by an unbridgeable
chasm. It frees us from reality, blots out the normal recollection
of reality, and sets us in another world and a totally different life,
which fundamentally has nothing in common with real life...."
Hildebrandt then asserts that in falling asleep our whole being,
with its forms of existence, disappears "as through an invisible
trapdoor." In one's dream one is perhaps making a voyage to St. Helena
in order to offer the imprisoned Napoleon an exquisite vintage of
Moselle. One is most affably received by the ex-emperor, and one feels
almost sorry when, on waking, the interesting illusion is destroyed.
But let us now compare the situation existing in the dream with the
actual reality. The dreamer has never been a wine-merchant, and has no
desire to become one. He has never made a sea-voyage, and St. Helena
is the last place in the world that he would choose as the destination
of such a voyage. The dreamer feels no sympathy for Napoleon, but on
the contrary a strong patriotic aversion. And lastly, the dreamer
was not yet among the living when Napoleon died on the island of St.
Helena; so that it was beyond the realms of possibility that he should
have had any personal relations with Napoleon. The dream-experience
thus appears as something entirely foreign, interpolated between two
mutually related and successive periods of time.
"Nevertheless," continues Hildebrandt, "the apparent contrary is
just as true and correct. I believe that side by side with this
seclusion and insulation there may still exist the most intimate
interrelation. We may therefore justly say: Whatever the dream may
offer us, it derives its material from reality, and from the psychic
life centered upon this reality. However extraordinary the dream may
seem, it can never detach itself from the real world, and its most
sublime as well as its most ridiculous constructions must always
borrow their elementary material either from that which our eyes
have beheld in the outer world, or from that which has already found a
place somewhere in our waking thoughts; in other words, it must be
taken from that which we have already experienced, either
objectively or subjectively."
B. The Material of Dreams- Memory in Dreams
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That all the material composing the content of a dream is somehow
derived from experience, that it is reproduced or remembered in the
dream- this at least may be accepted as an incontestable fact. Yet
it would be wrong to assume that such a connection between the
dream-content and reality will be easily obvious from a comparison
between the two. On the contrary, the connection must be carefully
sought, and in quite a number of cases it may for a long while elude
discovery. The reason for this is to be found in a number of
peculiarities evinced by the faculty of memory in dreams; which
peculiarities, though generally observed, have hitherto defied
explanation. It will be worth our while to examine these
characteristics exhaustively.
To begin with, it happens that certain material appears in the
dream-content which cannot be subsequently recognized, in the waking
state, as being part of one's knowledge and experience. One
remembers clearly enough having dreamed of the thing in question,
but one cannot recall the actual experience or the time of its
occurrence. The dreamer is therefore in the dark as to the source
which the dream has tapped, and is even tempted to believe in an
independent productive activity on the part of the dream, until, often
long afterwards, a fresh episode restores the memory of that former
experience, which had been given up for lost, and so reveals the
source of the dream. One is therefore forced to admit that in the
dream something was known and remembered that cannot be remembered
in the waking state. *
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* Vaschide even maintains that it has often been observed that in
one's dreams one speaks foreign languages more fluently and with
greater purity than in the waking state.
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Delboeuf relates from his own experience an especially impressive
example of this kind. He saw in his dream the courtyard of his house
covered with snow, and found there two little lizards, half-frozen and
buried in the snow. Being a lover of animals he picked them up, warmed
them, and put them back into the hole in the wall which was reserved
especially for them. He also gave them a few fronds of a little fern
which was growing on the wall, and of which he knew they were very
fond. In the dream he knew the name of the plant; Asplenium ruta
muralis. The dream continued returning after a digression to the
lizards, and to his astonishment Delboeuf saw two other little lizards
falling upon what was left of the ferns. On turning his eyes to the
open fields he saw a fifth and a sixth lizard making for the hole in
the wall, and finally the whole road was covered by a procession of
lizards, all wandering in the same direction.
In his waking state Delboeuf knew only a few Latin names of
plants, and nothing of any Asplenium. To his great surprise he
discovered that a fern of this name did actually exist, and that the
correct name was Asplenium ruta muraria, which the dream had
slightly distorted. An accidental coincidence was of course
inconceivable; yet where he got his knowledge of the name Asplenium in
the dream remained a mystery to him.
The dream occurred in 1862. Sixteen years later, while at the
house of one of his friends, the philosopher noticed a small album
containing dried plants, such as are sold as souvenirs to visitors
in many parts of Switzerland. A sudden recollection came to him: he
opened the herbarium, discovered therein the Asplenium of his dream,
and recognized his own handwriting in the accompanying Latin name. The
connection could now be traced. In 1860, two years before the date
of the lizard dream, one of his friend's sisters, while on her
wedding-journey, had paid a visit to Delboeuf. She had with her at the
time this very album, which was intended for her brother, and Delboeuf
had taken the trouble to write, at the dictation of a botanist, the
Latin name under each of the dried plants.
The same good fortune which gave this example its unusual value
enabled Delboeuf to trace yet another portion of this dream to its
forgotten source. One day in 1877 he came upon an old volume of an
illustrated periodical, in which he found the whole procession of
lizards pictured, just as he had dreamt of it in 1862. The volume bore
the date 1861, and Delboeuf remembered that he had subscribed to the
journal since its first appearance.
That dreams have at their disposal recollections which are
inaccessible to the waking state is such a remarkable and
theoretically important fact that I should like to draw attention to
the point by recording yet other hypermnesic dreams. Maury relates
that for some time the word Mussidan used to occur to him during the
day. He knew it to be the name of a French city, but that was all. One
night he dreamed of a conversation with a certain person, who told him
that she came from Mussidan, and, in answer to his question as to
where the city was, she replied: "Mussidan is the principal town of
a district in the department of Dordogne." On waking, Maury gave no
credence to the information received in his dream; but the gazetteer
showed it to be perfectly correct. In this case the superior knowledge
of the dreamer was confirmed, but it was not possible to trace the
forgotten source of this knowledge.
Jessen (p. 55) refers to a very similar incident, the period of
which is more remote. "Among others we may here mention the dream of
the elder Scaliger (Hennings, l.c., p. 300), who wrote a poem in
praise of the famous men of Verona, and to whom a man named
Brugnolus appeared in a dream, complaining that he had been neglected.
Though Scaliger could not remember that he had heard of the man, he
wrote some verses in his honour, and his son learned subsequently that
a certain Brugnolus had at one time been famed in Verona as a critic."
A hypermnesic dream, especially remarkable for the fact that a
memory not at first recalled was afterwards recognized in a dream
which followed the first, is narrated by the Marquis d'Hervey de St.
Denis: * "I once dreamed of a young woman with fair golden hair,
whom I saw chatting with my sister as she showed her a piece of
embroidery. In my dream she seemed familiar to me; I thought,
indeed, that I had seen her repeatedly. After waking, her face was
still quite vividly before me, but I was absolutely unable to
recognize it. I fell asleep again; the dream-picture repeated
itself. In this new dream I addressed the golden-haired lady and asked
her whether I had not had the pleasure of meeting her somewhere. 'Of
course,' she replied; 'don't you remember the bathing-place at
Pornic?' Thereupon I awoke, and I was then able to recall with
certainty and in detail the incidents with which this charming
dream-face was connected."
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* See Vaschide, p. 232.
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The same author * recorded that a musician of his acquaintance
once heard in a dream a melody which was absolutely new to him. Not
until many years later did he find it in an old collection of
musical compositions, though still he could not remember ever having
seen it before.
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* Vaschide, p. 233
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I believe that Myers has published a whole collection of such
hypermnesic dreams in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical
Research, but these, unfortunately, are inaccessible to me. I think
everyone who occupies himself with dreams will recognize, as a very
common phenomenon, the fact that a dream will give proof of the
knowledge and recollection of matters of which the dreamer, in his
waking state, did not imagine himself to be cognizant. In my
analytic investigations of nervous patients, of which I shall speak
later, I find that it happens many times every week that I am able
to convince them, from their dreams, that they are perfectly well
acquainted with quotations, obscene expressions, etc., and make use of
them in their dreams, although they have forgotten them in their
waking state. I shall here cite an innocent example of
dream-hypermnesia, because it was easy to trace the source of the
knowledge which was accessible only in the dream.
A patient dreamed amongst other things (in a rather long dream) that
he ordered a kontuszowka in a cafe, and after telling me this he asked
me what it could be, as he had never heard the name before. I was able
to tell him that kontuszowka was a Polish liqueur, which he could
not have invented in his dream, as the name had long been familiar
to me from the advertisements. At first the patient would not
believe me, but some days later, after he had allowed his dream of the
cafe to become a reality, he noticed the name on a signboard at a
street corner which for some months he had been passing at least twice
a day.
I have learned from my own dreams how largely the discovery of the
origin of individual dream-elements may be dependent on chance.
Thus, for some years before I had thought of writing this book, I
was haunted by the picture of a church tower of fairly simple
construction, which I could not remember ever having seen. I then
suddenly recognized it, with absolute certainty, at a small station
between Salzburg and Reichenhall. This was in the late nineties, and
the first time I had travelled over this route was in 1886. In later
years, when I was already busily engaged in the study of dreams, I was
quite annoyed by the frequent recurrence of the dream-image of a
certain peculiar locality. I saw, in definite orientation to my own
person- on my left- a dark space in which a number of grotesque
sandstone figures stood out. A glimmering recollection, which I did
not quite believe, told me that it was the entrance to a
beer-cellar; but I could explain neither the meaning nor the origin of
this dream-picture. In 1907 I happened to go to Padua, which, to my
regret, I had been unable to visit since 1895. My first visit to
this beautiful university city had been unsatisfactory. I had been
unable to see Giotto's frescoes in the church of the Madonna dell'
Arena: I set out for the church, but turned back on being informed
that it was closed for the day. On my second visit, twelve years
later, I thought I would compensate myself for this disappointment,
and before doing anything else I set out for Madonna dell' Arena. In
the street leading to it, on my left, probably at the spot where I had
turned back in 1895, I discovered the place, with its sandstone
figures, which I had so often seen in my dream. It was, in fact, the
entrance to a restaurant garden.
One of the sources from which dreams draw material for reproduction-
material of which some part is not recalled or utilized in our
waking thoughts- is to be found in childhood. Here I will cite only
a few of the authors who have observed and emphasized this fact:
Hildebrandt (p. 23): "It has already been expressly admitted that
a dream sometimes brings back to the mind, with a wonderful power of
reproduction, remote and even forgotten experiences from the
earliest periods of one's life."
Strumpell (p. 40): "The subject becomes more interesting still
when we remember how the dream sometimes drags out, as it were, from
the deepest and densest psychic deposits which later years have
piled upon the earliest experiences of childhood, the pictures of
certain persons, places and things, quite intact, and in all their
original freshness. This is confined not merely to such impressions as
were vividly perceived at the time of their occurrence, or were
associated with intense psychological values, to recur later in the
dream as actual reminiscences which give pleasure to the waking
mind. On the contrary, the depths of the dream-memory rather contain
such images of persons, places, things and early experiences as either
possessed but little consciousness and no psychic value whatsoever, or
have long since lost both, and therefore appear totally strange and
unknown, both in the dream and in the waking state, until their
early origin is revealed."
Volkelt (p. 119): "It is especially to be remarked how readily
infantile and youthful reminiscences enter into our dreams. What we
have long ceased to think about, what has long since lost all
importance for us, is constantly recalled by the dream."
The control which the dream exercises over material from our
childhood, most of which, as is well known, falls into the lacunae
of our conscious memory, is responsible for the production of
interesting hypermnesic dreams, of which I shall cite a few more
examples.
Maury relates (p. 92) that as a child he often went from his
native city, Meaux, to the neighbouring Trilport, where his father was
superintending the construction of a bridge. One night a dream
transported him to Trilport and he was once more playing in the
streets there. A man approached him, wearing a sort of uniform.
Maury asked him his name, and he introduced himself, saying that his
name was C, and that he was a bridge-guard. On waking, Maury, who
still doubted the actuality of the reminiscence, asked his old
servant, who had been with him in his childhood, whether she
remembered a man of this name. "Of course," was the reply; "he used to
be watchman on the bridge which your father was building then."
Maury records another example, which demonstrates no less clearly
the reliability of the reminiscences of childhood that emerge in our
dreams. M. F., who as a child had lived in Montbrison, decided,
after an absence of twenty-five years, to visit his home and the old
friends of his family. The night before his departure he dreamt that
he had reached his destination, and that near Montbrison he met a
man whom he did not know by sight, and who told him that he was M. F.,
a friend of his father's. The dreamer remembered that as a child he
had known a gentleman of this name, but on waking he could no longer
recall his features. Several days later, having actually arrived at
Montbrison, he found once more the locality of his dream, which he had
thought was unknown to him, and there he met a man whom he at once
recognized as the M. F. of his dream, with only this difference,
that the real person was very much older than his dream-image.
Here I might relate one of my own dreams, in which the recalled
impression takes the form of an association. In my dream I saw a man
whom I recognized, while dreaming, as the doctor of my native town.
His face was not distinct, but his features were blended with those of
one of my schoolmasters, whom I still meet from time to time. What
association there was between the two persons I could not discover
on waking, but upon questioning my mother concerning the doctor I
learned that he was a one-eyed man. The schoolmaster, whose image in
my dream obscured that of the physician, had also only one eye. I
had not seen the doctor for thirty-eight years, and as far as I know I
had never thought of him in my waking state, although a scar on my
chin might have reminded me of his professional attentions.
As though to counterbalance the excessive part which is played in
our dreams by the impressions of childhood, many authors assert that
the majority of dreams reveal elements drawn from our most recent
experiences. Robert (p. 46) even declares that the normal dream
generally occupies itself only with the impressions of the last few
days. We shall find, indeed, that the theory of the dream advanced
by Robert absolutely requires that our oldest impressions should be
thrust into the background, and our most recent ones brought to the
fore. However, the fact here stated by Robert is correct; this I can
confirm from my own investigations. Nelson, an American author,
holds that the impressions received in a dream most frequently date
from the second day before the dream, or from the third day before it,
as though the impressions of the day immediately preceding the dream
were not sufficiently weakened and remote.
Many authors who are unwilling to question the intimate connection
between the dream-content and the waking state have been struck by the
fact that the impressions which have intensely occupied the waking
mind appear in dreams only after they have been to some extent removed
from the mental activities of the day. Thus, as a rule, we do not
dream of a beloved person who is dead while we are still overwhelmed
with sorrow (Delage). Yet Miss Hallam, one of the most recent
observers, has collected examples which reveal the very opposite
behaviour in this respect, and upholds the claims of psychological
individuality in this matter.
The third, most remarkable, and at the same time most
incomprehensible, peculiarity of memory in dreams is shown in the
selection of the material reproduced; for here it is not, as in the
waking state, only the most significant things that are held to be
worth remembering, but also the most indifferent and insignificant
details. In this connection I will quote those authors who have
expressed their surprise in the most emphatic language.
Hildebrandt (p. 11): "For it is a remarkable fact that dreams do
not, as a rule, take their elements from important and far-reaching
events, or from the intense and urgent interests of the preceding day,
but from unimportant incidents, from the worthless odds and ends of
recent experience or of the remoter past. The most shocking death in
our family, the impressions of which keep us awake long into the
night, is obliterated from our memories until the first moment of
waking brings it back to us with distressing force. On the other hand,
the wart on the forehead of a passing stranger, to whom we did not
give a moment's thought once he was out of sight, finds a place in our
dreams."
Strumpell (p. 39) speaks of "cases in which the analysis of a
dream brings to light elements which, although derived from the
experiences of yesterday or the day before yesterday, were yet so
unimportant and worthless for the waking state that they were
forgotten soon after they were experienced. Some experiences may be
the chance-heard remarks of other persons, or their superficially
observed actions, or, fleeting perceptions of things or persons, or
isolated phrases that we have read, etc."
Havelock Ellis (p. 727): "The profound emotions of waking life,
the questions and problems on which we spend our chief voluntary
mental energy, are not those which usually present themselves at
once to dream-consciousness. It is, so far as the immediate past is
concerned, mostly the trifling, the incidental, the 'forgotten'
impressions of daily life which reappear in our dreams. The psychic
activities that are awake most intensely are those that sleep most
profoundly."
It is precisely in connection with these characteristics of memory
in dreams that Binz (p. 45) finds occasion to express
dissatisfaction with the explanations of dreams which he himself had
favoured: "And the normal dream raises similar questions. Why do we
not always dream of mental impressions of the day before, instead of
going back, without any perceptible reason, to the almost forgotten
past, now lying far behind us? Why, in a dream, does consciousness
so often revive the impression of indifferent memory-pictures, while
the cerebral cells that bear the most sensitive records of
experience remain for the most part inert and numb, unless an acute
revival during the waking state has quite recently excited them?"
We can readily understand how the strange preference shown by the
dream-memory for the indifferent and therefore disregarded details
of daily experience must commonly lead us altogether to overlook the
dependence of dreams on the waking state, or must at least make it
difficult for us to prove this dependence in any individual case. Thus
it happened that in the statistical treatment of her own and her
friend's dream, Miss Whiton Calkins found that 11 per cent of the
entire number showed no relation to the waking state. Hildebrandt
was certainly correct in his assertion that all our dream-images could
be genetically explained if we devoted enough time and material to the
tracing of their origin. To be sure, he calls this "a most tedious and
thankless job. For most often it would lead us to ferret out all sorts
of psychically worthless things from the remotest corners of our
storehouse of memories, and to bring to light all sorts of quite
indifferent events of long ago from the oblivion which may have
overtaken them an hour after their occurrence." I must, however,
express my regret that this discerning author refrained from following
the path which at first sight seemed so unpromising, for it would have
led him directly to the central point of the explanation of dreams.
The behaviour of memory in dreams is surely most significant for any
theory of memory whatsoever. It teaches us that "nothing which we have
once psychically possessed is ever entirely lost" (Scholz, p. 34);
or as Delboeuf puts it, "que toute impression, meme la plus
insignificante, laisse une trace inalterable, indifiniment susceptible
de reparaitre au jour"; * a conclusion to which we are urged by so
many other pathological manifestations of mental life. Let us bear
in mind this extraordinary capacity of the memory in dreams, in
order the more keenly to realize the contradiction which has to be put
forward in certain dream-theories to be mentioned later, which seek to
explain the absurdities and incoherences of dreams by a partial
forgetting of what we have known during the day.
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* That every impression, even the most insignificant, leaves an
ineradicable mark, indefinitely capable of reappearing by day.
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It might even occur to one to reduce the phenomenon of dreaming to
that of remembering, and to regard the dream as the manifestation of a
reproductive activity, unresting even at night, which is an end in
itself. This would seem to be in agreement with statements such as
those made by Pilcz, according to which definite relations between the
time of dreaming and the contents of a dream may be demonstrated,
inasmuch as the impressions reproduced by the dream in deep sleep
belong to the remote past, while those reproduced towards morning
are of recent origin. But such a conception is rendered improbable
from the outset by the manner in which the dream deals with the
material to be remembered. Strumpell rightly calls our attention to
the fact that repetitions of experiences do not occur in dreams. It is
true that a dream will make a beginning in that direction, but the
next link is wanting; it appears in a different form, or is replaced
by something entirely novel. The dream gives us only fragmentary
reproductions; this is so far the rule that it permits of a
theoretical generalization. Still, there are exceptions in which an
episode is repeated in a dream as completely as it can be reproduced
by our waking memory. Delboeuf relates of one of his university
colleagues that a dream of his repeated, in all its details, a
perilous drive in which he escaped accident as if by miracle. Miss
Calkins mentions two dreams the contents of which exactly reproduced
an experience of the previous day, and in a later chapter I shall have
occasion to give an example that came to my knowledge of a childish
experience which recurred unchanged in a dream. *
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* From subsequent experience I am able to state that it is not at
all rare to find in dreams reproductions of simple and unimportant
occupations of everyday life, such as packing trunks, preparing food
in the kitchen, etc., but in such dreams the dreamer himself
emphasizes not the character of the recollection but its "reality"- "I
really did this during the day."
C. Dream-Stimuli and Sources
-
What is meant by dream-stimuli and dream-sources may be explained by
a reference to the popular saying: "Dreams come from the stomach."
This notion covers a theory which conceives the dream as resulting
from a disturbance of sleep. We should not have dreamed if some
disturbing element had not come into play during our sleep, and the
dream is the reaction against this disturbance.
The discussion of the exciting causes of dreams occupies a great
deal of space in the literature of dreams. It is obvious that this
problem could have made its appearance only after dreams had become an
object of biological investigation. The ancients, who conceived of
dreams as divine inspirations, had no need to look for stimuli; for
them a dream was due to the will of divine or demonic powers, and
its content was the product of their special knowledge and
intention. Science, however, immediately raised the question whether
the stimuli of dreams were single or multiple, and this in turn led to
the consideration whether the causal explanation of dreams belonged to
the region of psychology or to that of physiology. Most authors appear
to assume that disturbance of sleep, and hence dreams, may arise
from various causes, and that physical as well as mental stimuli may
play the part of dream-excitants. Opinions differ widely in preferring
this or the other factor as the cause of dreams, and in classifying
them in the order of importance.
Whenever the sources of dreams are completely enumerated they fall
into the following four categories, which have also been employed in
the classification of dreams: (1) external (objective) sensory
stimuli; (2) internal (subjective) sensory stimuli; (3) internal
(organic) physical stimuli; (4) Purely psychical sources of
excitation.
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1. External sensory stimuli
-
The younger Strumpell, the son of the philosopher, whose work on
dreams has already more than once served us as a guide in
considering the problems of dreams, has, as is well known, recorded
his observations of a patient afflicted with general anaesthesia of
the skin and with paralysis of several of the higher sensory organs.
This man would laps into sleep whenever the few remaining sensory
paths between himself and the outer world were closed. When we wish to
fall asleep we are accustomed to strive for a condition similar to
that obtaining in Strumpell's experiment. We close the most
important sensory portals, the eyes, and we endeavour to protect the
other senses from all stimuli or from any change of the stimuli
already acting upon them. We then fall asleep, although our
preparations are never wholly successful. For we can never
completely insulate the sensory organs, nor can we entirely abolish
the excitability of the sensory organs themselves. That we may at
any time be awakened by intenser stimuli should prove to us "that
the mind has remained in constant communication with the external
world even during sleep." The sensory stimuli that reach us during
sleep may easily become the source of dreams.
There are a great many stimuli of this nature, ranging from those
unavoidable stimuli which are proper to the state of sleep or
occasionally admitted by it, to those fortuitous stimuli which are
calculated to wake the sleeper. Thus a strong light may fall upon
the eyes, a noise may be heard, or an odour may irritate the mucous
membranes of the nose. In our unintentional movements during sleep
we may lay bare parts of the body, and thus expose them to a sensation
of cold, or by a change of position we may excite sensations of
pressure and touch. A mosquito may bite us, or a slight nocturnal
mischance may simultaneously attack more than one sense-organ.
Observers have called attention to a whole series of dreams in which
the stimulus ascertained on waking and some part of the
dream-content corresponded to such a degree that the stimulus could be
recognized as the source of the dream.
I shall here cite a number of such dreams, collected by Jessen (p.
527), which are traceable to more or less accidental objective sensory
stimuli. Every noise indistinctly perceived gives rise to
corresponding dream-representations; the rolling of thunder takes us
into the thick of battle, the crowing of a cock may be transformed
into human shrieks of terror, and the creaking of a door may conjure
up dreams of burglars breaking into the house. When one of our
blankets slips off us at night we may dream that we are walking
about naked, or falling into water. If we lie diagonally across the
bed with our feet extending beyond the edge, we may dream of
standing on the brink of a terrifying precipice, or of falling from
a great height. Should our head accidentally get under the pillow we
may imagine a huge rock overhanging us and about to crush us under its
weight. An accumulation of semen produces voluptuous dreams, and local
pains give rise to ideas of suffering ill-treatment, of hostile
attacks, or of accidental bodily injuries....
"Meier (Versuch einer Erklarung des Nachtwandelns, Halle, 1758, p.
33) once dreamed of being attacked by several men who threw him flat
on the ground and drove a stake into the earth between his first and
second toes. While imagining this in his dream he suddenly awoke and
felt a piece of straw sticking between his toes. The same author,
according to Hemmings (Von den Traumen und Nachtwandlern, Weimar,
1784, p. 258), "dreamed on another occasion, when his nightshirt was
rather too tight round his neck, that he was being hanged. In his
youth Hoffbauer dreamed of having fallen from a high wall, and
found, on waking, that the bedstead had come apart, and that he had
actually fallen on to the floor.... Gregory relates that he once
applied a hot-water bottle to his feet, and dreamed of taking a trip
to the summit of Mount Etna, where he found the heat of the soil
almost unbearable. After having a blister applied to his head, another
man dreamed of being scalped by Indians; still another, whose shirt
was damp, dreamed that he was dragged through a stream. An attack of
gout caused a patient to believe that he was in the hands of the
Inquisition, and suffering the pains of torture (Macnish)."
The argument that there is a resemblance between the
dream-stimulus and the dream-content would be confirmed if, by a
systematic induction of stimuli, we should succeed in producing dreams
corresponding to these stimuli. According to Macnish such
experiments had already been made by Giron de Buzareingues. "He left
his knee exposed and dreamed of travelling on a mail-coach by night.
He remarked, in this connection, that travellers were well aware how
cold the knees become in a coach at night. On another occasion he left
the back of his head uncovered, and dreamed that he was taking part in
a religious ceremony in the open air. In the country where he lived it
was customary to keep the head always covered except on occasions of
this kind."
Maury reports fresh observation on self-induced dreams of his own.
(A number of other experiments were unsuccessful.)
1. He was tickled with a feather on his lips and on the tip of his
nose. He dreamed of an awful torture, viz., that a mask of pitch was
stuck to his face and then forcibly torn off, bringing the skin with
it.
2. Scissors were whetted against a pair of tweezers. He heard
bells ringing, then sounds of tumult which took him back to the days
of the Revolution of 1848.
3. Eau de Cologne was held to his nostrils. He found himself in
Cairo, in the shop of Johann Maria Farina. This was followed by
fantastic adventures which he was not able to recall.
4. His neck was lightly pinched. He dreamed that a blister was being
applied, and thought of a doctor who had treated him in childhood.
5. A hot iron was brought near his face. He dreamed that
chauffeurs * had broken into the house, and were forcing the occupants
to give up their money by thrusting their feet into braziers. The
Duchesse d'Abrantes, whose secretary he imagined himself to be then
entered the room.
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* Chauffeurs were bands of robbers in the Vendee who resorted to
this form of torture.
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6. A drop of water was allowed to fall on to his forehead. He
imagined himself in Italy, perspiring heavily, and drinking the
white wine of Orvieto.
7. When the light of a candle screened with red paper was allowed to
fall on his face, he dreamed of thunder, of heat, and of a storm at
sea which he once witnessed in the English Channel.
Hervey, Weygandt, and others have made attempts to produce dreams
experimentally.
Many have observed the striking skill of the dream in interweaving
into its structure sudden impressions from the outer world, in such
a manner as to represent a gradually approaching catastrophe
(Hildebrandt). "In former years," this author relates, "I occasionally
made use of an alarm-clock in order to wake punctually at a certain
hour in the morning. It probably happened hundreds of times that the
sound of this instrument fitted into an apparently very long and
connected dream, as though the entire dream had been especially
designed for it, as though it found in this sound its appropriate
and logically indispensable climax, its inevitable denouement."
I shall presently have occasion to cite three of these alarm-clock
dreams in a different connection.
Volkelt (p. 68) relates: "A composer once dreamed that he was
teaching a class, and was just explaining something to his pupils.
When he had finished he turned to one of the boys with the question:
'Did you understand me?' The boy cried out like one possessed 'Oh,
ja!' Annoyed by this, he reprimanded his pupil for shouting. But now
the entire class was screaming 'Orja,' then 'Eurjo,' and finally
'Feuerjo.' He was then aroused by the actual fire alarm in the
street."
Garnier (Traite des facultes de l'ame, 1865), on the authority of
Radestock, relates that Napoleon I, while sleeping in a carriage,
was awakened from a dream by an explosion which took him back to the
crossing of the Tagliamento and the bombardment of the Austrians, so
that he started up, crying, "We have been undermined."
The following dream of Maury's has become celebrated: He was ill
in bed; his mother was sitting beside him. He dreamed of the Reign
of Terror during the Revolution. He witnessed some terrible scenes
of murder, and finally he himself was summoned before the Tribunal.
There he saw Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier-Tinville, and all the
sorry heroes of those terrible days; he had to give an account of
himself, and after all manner of incidents which did not fix
themselves in his memory, he was sentenced to death. Accompanied by an
enormous crowd, he was led to the place of execution. He mounted the
scaffold; the executioner tied him to the plank, it tipped over, and
the knife of the guillotine fell. He felt his head severed from his
trunk, and awakened in terrible anxiety, only to find that the
head-board of the bed had fallen, and had actually struck the cervical
vertebrae just where the knife of the guillotine would have fallen.
This dream gave rise to an interesting discussion, initiated by Le
Lorrain and Egger in the Revue Philosophique, as to whether, and
how, it was possible for the dreamer to crowd together an amount of
dream-content apparently so large in the short space of time
elapsing between the perception of the waking stimulus and the
moment of actual waking.
Examples of this nature show that objective stimuli occurring in
sleep are among the most firmly-established of all the sources of
dreams; they are, indeed, the only stimuli of which the layman knows
anything whatever. If we ask an educated person who is not familiar
with the literature of dreams how dreams originate, he is certain to
reply by a reference to a case known to him in which a dream has
been explained after waking by a recognized objective stimulus.
Science, however, cannot stop here, but is incited to further
investigation by the observation that the stimulus influencing the
senses during sleep does not appear in the dream at all in its true
form, but is replaced by some other representation, which is in some
way related to it. But the relation existing between the stimulus
and the resulting dream is, according to Maury, "une affinite
quelconque mais qui n'est pas unique et exclusive" * (p. 72). If we
read, for example, three of Hildebrandt's "alarm-clock dreams," we
shall be compelled to ask why the same casual stimulus evoked so
many different results, and why just these results and no others.
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* A sort of relation which is, however, neither unique nor
exclusive.
-
(p. 37): "I am taking a walk on a beautiful spring morning. I stroll
through the green meadows to a neighbouring village, where I see
numbers of the inhabitants going to church, wearing their best clothes
and carrying their hymn-books under their arms. I remember that it
is Sunday, and that the morning service will soon begin. I decide to
attend it, but as I am rather overheated I think I will wait in the
churchyard until I am cooler. While reading the various epitaphs, I
hear the sexton climbing the church-tower, and I see above me the
small bell which is about to ring for the beginning of service. For
a little while it hangs motionless; then it begins to swing, and
suddenly its notes resound so clearly and penetratingly that my
sleep comes to an end. But the notes of the bell come from the
alarm-clock."
"A second combination. It is a bright winter day; the streets are
deep in snow. I have promised to go on a sleigh-ride, but I have to
wait some time before I am told that the sleigh is at the door. Now
I am preparing to get into the sleigh. I put on my furs, the
foot-warmer is put in, and at last I have taken my seat. But still
my departure is delayed. At last the reins are twitched, the horses
start, and the sleigh bells, now violently shaken, strike up their
familiar music with a force that instantly tears the gossamer of my
dream. Again it is only the shrill note of my alarm-clock."
"Yet a third example. I see the kitchen-maid walking along the
passage to the dining-room, with a pile of several dozen plates. The
porcelain column in her arms seems to me to be in danger of losing its
equilibrium. 'Take care,' I exclaim, 'you will drop the whole pile!'
The usual retort is naturally made- that she is used to such things,
etc. Meanwhile I continue to follow her with my anxious gaze, and
behold, at the threshold the fragile plates fall and crash and roll
across the floor in hundreds of pieces. But I soon perceive that the
endless din is not really a rattling but a true ringing, and with this
ringing the dreamer now becomes aware that the alarm-clock has done
its duty."
The question why the dreaming mind misjudges the nature of the
objective sensory stimulus has been answered by Strumpell, and in an
almost identical fashion by Wundt; their explanation is that the
reaction of the mind to the stimulus attacking sleep is complicated
and confused by the formation of illusions. A sensory impression is
recognized by us and correctly interpreted- that is, it is classed
with the memory-group to which it belongs according to all previous
experience if the impression is strong, clear, and sufficiently
prolonged, and if we have sufficient time to submit it to those mental
processes. But if these conditions are not fulfilled we mistake the
object which gives rise to the impression, and on the basis of this
impression we construct an illusion. "If one takes a walk in an open
field and perceives indistinctly a distant object, it may happen
that one will at first take it for a horse." On closer inspection
the image of a cow, resting, may obtrude itself, and the picture may
finally resolve itself with certainty into a group of people sitting
on the ground. The impressions which the mind receives during sleep
from external stimuli are of a similarly indistinct nature; they
give rise to illusions because the impression evokes a greater or
lesser number of memory-images, through which it acquires its
psychic value. As for the question, in which of the many possible
spheres of memory the corresponding images are aroused, and which of
the possible associative connections are brought into play, that- to
quote Strumpell again- is indeterminable, and is left, as it were,
to the caprices of the mind.
Here we may take our choice. We may admit that the laws of
dream-formation cannot really be traced any further, and so refrain
from asking whether or not the interpretation of the illusion evoked
by the sensory impression depends upon still other conditions; or we
may assume that the objective sensory stimulus encroaching upon
sleep plays only a modest role as a dream-source, and that other
factors determine the choice of the memory-image to be evoked. Indeed,
on carefully examining Maury's experimentally produced dreams, which I
have purposely cited in detail, one is inclined to object that his
investigations trace the origin of only one element of the dreams, and
that the rest of the dream-content seems too independent and too
full of detail to be explained by a single requirement, namely, that
it must correspond with the element experimentally introduced. Indeed,
one even begins to doubt the illusion theory, and the power of
objective impressions to shape the dream, when one realizes that
such impressions are sometimes subjected to the most peculiar and
far-fetched interpretations in our dreams. Thus M. Simon tells of a
dream in which he saw persons of gigantic stature * seated at a table,
and heard distinctly the horrible clattering produced by the impact of
their jaws as they chewed their food. On waking he heard the clatter
of a horse's hooves as it galloped past his window. If in this case
the sound of the horse's hooves had revived ideas from the
memory-sphere of Gulliver's Travels, the sojourn with the giants of
Brobdingnag, and the virtuous horse-like creatures- as I should
perhaps interpret the dream without any assistance on the author's
part- ought not the choice of a memory-sphere so alien to the stimulus
to be further elucidated by other motives?
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* Gigantic persons in a dream justify the assumption that the
dream is dealing with a scene from the dreamer's childhood. This
interpretation of the dream as a reminiscence of Gulliver's Travels
is, by the way, a good example of how an interpretation should not
be made. The dream-interpreter should not permit his own
intelligence to operate in disregard of the dreamer's impressions.
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2. Internal (subjective) sensory stimuli
-
All objections to the contrary notwithstanding, we must admit that
the role of the objective sensory stimuli as producers of dreams has
been indisputably established, and if, having regard to their nature
and their frequency, these stimuli seem perhaps insufficient to
explain all dream-pictures, this indicates that we should look for
other dream-sources which act in a similar fashion. I do not know
where the idea first arose that together with the external sensory
stimuli the internal (subjective) stimuli should also be considered,
but as a matter of fact this has been done more or less explicitly
in all the more recent descriptions of the aetiology of dreams. "I
believe," says Wundt (p. 363), "that an important part is played in
dream-illusions by those subjective sensations of sight and hearing
which are familiar to us in the waking state as a luminous chaos in
the dark field of the vision, and a ringing, buzzing, etc., of the
ears, and in especial, subjective irritations of the retina. This
explains the remarkable tendency of dreams to delude the eyes with
numbers of similar or identical objects. Thus we see outspread
before our eyes innumerable birds, butterflies, fishes, coloured
beads, flowers, etc. Here the luminous dust in the dark field of
vision has assumed fantastic forms, and the many luminous points of
which it consists are embodied in our dreams in as many single images,
which, owing to the mobility of the luminous chaos, are seen as moving
objects. This is perhaps the reason of the dream's decided
preference for the most varied animal forms, for owing to the
multiplicity of such forms they can readily adapt themselves to the
subjective luminous images."
The subjective sensory stimuli as a source of dreams have the
obvious advantage that, unlike objective stimuli, they are independent
of external accidents. They are, so to speak, at the disposal of the
interpretation whenever they are required. But they are inferior to
the objective sensory stimuli by the fact that their claim to the role
of dream-inciters- which observation and experiment have established
in the case of objective stimuli- can in their case be verified with
difficulty or not at all. The main proof of the dream-inciting power
of subjective sensory stimuli is afforded by the so-called
hypnogogic hallucinations, which have been described by Johann
Muller as "phantastic visual manifestations." They are those very
vivid and changeable pictures which with many people occur
constantly during the period of falling asleep, and which may linger
for a while even after the eyes have been opened. Maury, who was
very subject to these pictures, made a thorough study of them, and
maintained that they were related to or rather identical with
dream-images. This had already been asserted by Johann Muller. Maury
maintains that a certain psychic passivity is necessary for their
origin; that it requires a relaxation of the intensity of attention
(p. 59). But one may perceive a hypnogogic hallucination in any
frame of mind if one falls into such a lethargy for a moment, after
which one may perhaps wake up, until this oft-repeated process
terminates in sleep. According to Maury, if one wakes up shortly after
such an experience, it is often possible to trace in the dream the
images which one has perceived before falling asleep as hypnogogic
hallucinations (p. 134). Thus Maury on one occasion saw a series of
images of grotesque figures with distorted features and curiously
dressed hair, which obtruded themselves upon him with incredible
importunity during the period of falling asleep, and which, upon
waking, he recalled having seen in his dream. On another occasion,
while suffering from hunger, because he was subjecting himself to a
rather strict diet, he saw in one of his hypnogogic states a plate,
and a hand armed with a fork taking some food from the plate. In his
dream he found himself at a table abundantly supplied with food, and
heard the clatter of the diner's forks. On yet another occasion, after
falling asleep with strained and painful eyes, he had a hypnogogic
hallucination of microscopically small characters, which he was able
to decipher, one by one, only with a great effort; and on waking
from sleep an hour later he recalled a dream in which there was an
open book with very small letters, which he was obliged to read
through with laborious effort.
Not only pictures, but auditory hallucinations of words, names,
etc., may also occur hypnogogically, and then repeat themselves in the
dream, like an overture announcing the principal motif of the opera
which is to follow.
A more recent observer of hypnogogic hallucinations, G. Trumbull
Ladd, follows the same lines as Johann Muller and Maury. By dint of
practice he succeeded in acquiring the faculty of suddenly arousing
himself, without opening his eyes, two to five minutes after gradually
falling asleep. This enabled him to compare the disappearing retinal
sensations with the dream-images remaining in his memory. He assures
us that an intimate relation between the two can always be recognized,
inasmuch as the luminous dots and lines of light spontaneously
perceived by the retina produce, so to speak, the outline or scheme of
the psychically perceived dream-images. For example, a dream in
which he saw before him clearly printed lines, which he read and
studied, corresponded with a number of luminous spots arranged in
parallel lines; or, to express it in his own words: The clearly
printed page resolved itself into an object which appeared to his
waking perception like part of an actual printed page seen through a
small hole in a sheet of paper, but at a distance too great to
permit of its being read. Without in any way underestimating the
central element of the phenomenon, Ladd believes that hardly any
visual dream occurs in our minds that is not based on material
furnished by this internal condition of retinal irritability. This
is particularly true of dreams which occur shortly after falling
asleep in a dark room, while dreams occurring in the morning, near the
period of waking, receive their stimulus from the objective light
penetrating the eye in a brightly-lit room. The shifting and
infinitely variable character of the spontaneous luminous
excitations of the retina exactly corresponds with the fitful
succession of images presented to us in our dreams. If we attach any
importance to Ladd's observations, we cannot underrate the
productiveness of this subjective source of stimuli; for visual
images, as we know, are the principal constituents of our dreams.
The share contributed by the other senses, excepting, perhaps, the
sense of hearing, is relatively insignificant and inconstant.
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3. Internal (organic) physical stimuli
-
If we are disposed to look for the sources of dreams not outside but
inside the organism, we must remember that almost all our internal
organs, which in a state of health hardly remind us of their
existence, may, in states of excitation- as we call them- or in
disease, become a source of the most painful sensations, and must
therefore be put on a par with the external excitants of pain and
sensation. Strumpell, for example, gives expression to a long-familiar
experience when he declares that "during sleep the psyche becomes
far more deeply and broadly conscious of its coporality than in the
waking state, and it is compelled to receive and to be influenced by
certain stimulating impressions originating in parts of the body,
and in alterations of the body, of which it is unconscious in the
waking state." Even Aristotle declares it to be quite possible that
a dream may draw our attention to incipient morbid conditions which we
have not noticed in the waking state (owing to the exaggerated
intensity of the impressions experienced in the dream; and some
medical authors, who certainly did not believe in the prophetic nature
of dreams, have admitted the significance of dreams, at least in so
far as the predicting of disease is concerned. [Cf. M. Simon, p. 31,
and many earlier writers.] *
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* In addition to the diagnostic valuation of dreams (e.g., by
Hippocrates) mention must also be made of their therapeutic
significance in antiquity.
Among the Greeks there were dream oracles, which were vouchsafed
to patients in quest of recovery. The patient betook himself to the
temple of Apollo or Aesculapius; there he was subjected to various
ceremonies, bathed, rubbed and perfumed. A state of exaltation
having been thus induced, he was made to lie down in the temple on the
skin of a sacrificial ram. He fell asleep and dreamed of remedies,
which he saw in their natural form, or in symbolic images which the
priests afterwards interpreted.
For further references concerning the remedial dreams of the Greeks,
cf. Lehmann, i, 74; Bouche-Leclerq; Hermann, Gottesd. Altert. d.
Gr., SS 41; Privataltert. SS 38, 16; Bottinger in Sprengel's Beitr. z.
Gesch. d. Med., ii, p. 163, et seq.; W. Lloyd, Magnetism and Mesmerism
in Antiquity, London, 1877; Dollinger, Heidentum und Judentum, p. 130.
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Even in our days there seems to be no lack of authenticated examples
of such diagnostic achievements on the part of dreams. Thus Tissie
cites from Artigues (Essai sur la valeur semeiologique des Reves)
the history of a woman of forty-three, who, during several years of
apparently perfect health, was troubled with anxiety-dreams, and in
whom a medical examination subsequently revealed an incipient
affection of the heart, to which she presently succumbed.
Serious derangements of the internal organs clearly excite dreams in
quite a number of persons. The frequency of anxiety-dreams in diseases
of the heart and lungs has been generally realized; indeed, this
function of the dream-life is emphasized by so many writers that I
shall here content myself with a reference to the literature of the
subject (Radestock, Spitta, Maury, M. Simon, Tissie). Tissie even
believes that the diseased organs impress upon the dream-content its
characteristic features. The dreams of persons suffering from diseases
of the heart are generally very brief, and end in a terrified
awakening; death under terrible circumstances almost always find a
place in their content. Those suffering from diseases of the lungs
dream of suffocation, of being crushed, and of flight, and a great
many of them are subject to the familiar nightmare- which, by the way,
Borner has succeeded in inducing experimentally by lying on the face
and covering the mouth and nostrils. In digestive disturbances the
dream contains ideas from the sphere of gustatory enjoyment and
disgust. Finally, the influence of sexual excitement on the
dream-content is obvious enough in everyone's experience, and provides
the strongest confirmation of the whole theory of dream-instigation by
organic sensation.
Moreover, if we study the literature of dreams it becomes quite
evident that some writers (Maury, Weygandt) have been led to the study
of dream-problems by the influence their own pathological state has
had on the content of their dreams.
The enlargement of the number of dream-sources by such undeniably
established facts is, however, not so important as one might be led to
suppose; for dreams are, after all, phenomena which occur in healthy
persons- perhaps in all persons, and every night- and a pathological
state of the organs is evidently not one of the indispensable
conditions. For us, however, the question is not whence particular
dreams originate, but rather: what is the exciting cause of ordinary
dreams in normal people?
But we have only to go a step farther to find a source of dreams
which is more prolific than any of those mentioned above, and which
promises indeed to be inexhaustible. If it is established that the
bodily organs become, in sickness, an exciting source of dreams, and
if we admit that the mind, when diverted during sleep from the outer
world, can devote more of its attention to the interior of the body,
we may readily assume that the organs need not necessarily become
diseased in order to permit stimuli, which in one way or another
grow into dream-images, to reach the sleeping mind. What in the waking
state we vaguely perceive as a general sensation, perceptible by its
quality alone- a sensation to which, in the opinion of physicians, all
the organic systems contribute their share- this general sensation
would at night attain a greater potency, and, acting through its
individual components, would constitute the most prolific as well as
the most usual source of dream-representations. We should then have to
discover the laws by which organic stimuli are translated into
dream-representations.
This theory of the origin of dreams is the one most favoured by
all medical writers. The obscurity which conceals the essence of our
being- the "moi splanchnique" as Tissie terms it- from our
knowledge, and the obscurity of the origin of dreams, correspond so
closely that it was inevitable that they should be brought into
relation with one another. The theory according to which the organic
sensations are responsible for dreams has, moreover, another
attraction for the physician, inasmuch as it favours the
aetiological union of the dream with mental derangement, both of which
reveal so many points of agreement in their manifestations, since
changes in the general organic massive sensation and in the stimuli
emanating from the internal organs are also considered to have a
far-reaching significance as regards the origin of the psychoses. It
is therefore not surprising that the organic stimulus theory can be
traced to several writers who have propounded this theory
independently.
A number of writers have followed the train of thought developed
by Schopenhauer in 1851. Our conception of the universe has its origin
in the recasting by the intellect of the impressions which reach it
from without in the moulds of time, space and causality. During the
day the stimuli proceeding from the interior of the organism, from the
sympathetic nervous system, exert at most an unconscious influence
on our mood. At night, however, when the overwhelming effect of the
impressions of the day is no longer operative, the impressions that
surge upward from within are able to force themselves on our
attention- just as in the night we hear the rippling of the brook that
was drowned in the clamour of the day. But how else can the
intellect react to these stimuli than by transforming them in
accordance with its own function into things which occupy space and
time and follow the lines of causality?- and so a dream originates.
Thus Scherner, and after him Volkelt, endeavoured to discover the more
intimate relations between physical sensations and dream-pictures; but
we shall reserve the discussion of this point for our chapter on the
theory of dreams.
As a result of a singularly logical analysis, the psychiatrist
Krauss referred the origin of dreams, and also of deliria and
delusions, to the same element, namely, to organically determined
sensations. According to him, there is hardly any part of the organism
which might not become the starting-point of a dream or a delusion.
Organically determined sensations, he says, "may be divided into two
classes: (1) general sensations- those affecting the whole system; (2)
specific sensations- those that are immanent in the principal
systems of the vegetative organism, and which may in turn be
subdivided into five groups: (a) the muscular, (b) the pneumatic,
(c) the gastric, (d) the sexual, (e) the peripheral sensations (p.
33 of the second article)."
The origin of the dream-image from physical sensations is
conceived by Krauss as follows: The awakened sensation, in
accordance with some law of association, evokes an idea or image
bearing some relation to it, and combines with this idea or image,
forming an organic structure, towards which, however, the
consciousness does not maintain its normal attitude. For it does not
bestow any attention on the sensation, but concerns itself entirely
with the accompanying ideas; and this explains why the facts of the
case have been so long misunderstood (p. 11 ff.). Krauss even gives
this process the special name of "transubstantiation of the sensations
into dream-images" (p. 24).
The influence of organic physical stimuli on the formation of dreams
is today almost universally admitted, but the question as to the
nature of the law underlying this relation is answered in various
ways, and often obscurely. On the basis of the theory of physical
excitation the special task of dream-interpretation is to trace back
the content of a dream to the causative organic stimulus, and if we do
not accept the rules of interpretation advanced by Scherner, we
shall often find ourselves confronted by the awkward fact that the
organic source of excitation reveals itself only in the content of the
dream.
A certain agreement, however, appears in the interpretation of the
various forms of dreams which have been designated as "typical,"
because they recur in so many persons with almost the same content.
Among these are the well-known dreams of falling from a height, of the
dropping out of teeth, of flying, and of embarrassment because one
is naked or scantily clad. This last type of dream is said to be
caused simply by the dreamer's perception, felt in his sleep, that
he has thrown off the bedclothes and is uncovered. The dream that
one's teeth are dropping out is explained by "dental irritation,"
which does not, however, of necessity imply a morbid condition of
irritability in the teeth. According to Strumpell, the flying dream is
the adequate image employed by the mind to interpret the quantum of
stimulus emanating from the rising and sinking of the pulmonary
lobes when the cutaneous sensation of the thorax has lapsed into
insensibility. This latter condition causes the sensation which
gives rise to images of hovering in the air. The dream of falling from
a height is said to be due to the fact that an arm falls away from the
body, or a flexed knee is suddenly extended, after unconsciousness
of the sensation of cutaneous pressure has supervened, whereupon
this sensation returns to consciousness, and the transition from
unconsciousness to consciousness embodies itself psychically as a
dream of falling (Strumpell, p. 118). The weakness of these fairly
plausible attempts at explanation clearly lies in the fact that
without any further elucidation they allow this or that group of
organic sensations to disappear from psychic perception, or to obtrude
themselves upon it, until the constellation favourable for the
explanation has been established. Later on, however, I shall have
occasion to return to the subject of typical dreams and their origin.
From a comparison of a series of similar dreams, M. Simon
endeavoured to formulate certain rules governing the influence of
organic sensations on the nature of the resulting dream. He says (p.
34): "If during sleep any organic apparatus, which normally
participates in the expression of an affect, for any reason enters
into the state of excitation to which it is usually aroused by the
affect, the dream thus produced will contain representations which
harmonize with that affect."
Another rule reads as follows (p. 35): "If, during sleep, an organic
apparatus is in a state of activity, stimulation, or disturbance,
the dream will present ideas which correspond with the nature of the
organic function performed by that apparatus."
Mourly Vold has undertaken to prove the supposed influence of bodily
sensation on the production of dreams by experimenting on a single
physiological territory. He changed the positions of a sleeper's
limbs, and compared the resulting dreams with these changes. He
recorded the following results:
1. The position of a limb in a dream corresponds approximately to
that of reality, i.e., we dream of a static condition of the limb
which corresponds with the actual condition.
2. When one dreams of a moving limb it always happens that one of
the positions occurring in the execution of this movement
corresponds with the actual position.
3. The position of one's own limb may in the dream be attributed
to another person.
4. One may also dream that the movement in question is impeded.
5. The limb in any particular position may appear in the dream as an
animal or monster, in which case a certain analogy between the two
is established.
6. The behaviour of a limb may in the dream incite ideas which
bear some relation or other to this limb. Thus, for example, if we are
using our fingers we dream of numerals.
Results such as these would lead me to conclude that even the theory
of organic stimulation cannot entirely abolish the apparent freedom of
the determination of the dream-picture which will be evoked. *
-
* See below for a further discussion of the two volumes of records
of dreams since published by this writer.
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4. Psychic sources of excitation
-
When considering the relation of dreams to waking life, and the
provenance of the material of dreams, we learned that the earliest
as well as the most recent investigators are agreed that men dream
of what they do during the day, and of the things that interest them
in the waking state. This interest, continued from waking life into
sleep, is not only a psychic bond, joining the dream to life, but it
is also a source of dreams whose importance must not be
underestimated, and which, taken together with those stimuli which
become active and of interest during sleep, suffices to explain the
origin of all dream-images. Yet we have also heard the very contrary
of this asserted; namely, that dreams bear the sleeper away from the
interests of the day, and that in most cases we do not dream of things
which have occupied our attention during the day until after they have
lost, for our waking life, the stimulating force of belonging to the
present. Hence in the analysis of dream-life we are reminded at
every step that it is inadmissible to frame general rules without
making provision for qualifications by introducing such terms as
"frequently," "as a rule," "in most cases," and without being prepared
to admit the validity of exceptions.
If interest during the waking state together with the internal and
external stimuli that occur during sleep, sufficed to cover the
whole aetiology of dreams, we should be in a position to give a
satisfactory account of the origin of all the elements of a dream; the
problem of the dream-sources would then be solved, leaving us only the
task of discriminating between the part played by the psychic and that
played by the somatic dream-stimuli in individual dreams. But as a
matter of fact no such complete solution of a dream has ever been
achieved in any case, and everyone who has attempted such a solution
has found that components of the dream- and usually a great many of
them- are left whose source he is unable to trace. The interests of
the day as a psychic source of dreams are obviously not so influential
as to justify the confident assertion that every dreamer continues the
activities of his waking life in his dreams.
Other dream-sources of a psychic nature are not known. Hence, with
the exception perhaps of the explanation of dreams given by
Scherner, to which reference will be made later on, all the
explanations found in the literature of the subject show a
considerable hiatus whenever there is a question of tracing the images
and ideas which are the most characteristic material of dreams. In
this dilemma the majority of authors have developed a tendency to
belittle as far as possible the share of the psychic factor, which
is so difficult to determine, in the evocation of dreams. To be
sure, they distinguish as major divisions the nerve-stimulus dream and
the association-dream, and assert that the latter has its source
exclusively in reproduction (Wundt, p. 365), but they cannot dismiss
the doubt as to "whether they appear without any impulsion from
organic stimuli" (Volkelt, p. 127). And even the characteristic
quality of the pure association-dream disappears. To quote Volkelt (p.
118): "In the association-dream proper, there is no longer any
question of such a stable nucleus. Here the loose grouping
penetrates even to the very centre of the dream. The imaginative life,
already released from the control of reason and intellect, is here
no longer held together by the more important psychical and physical
stimuli, but is left to its own uncontrolled and confused
divagations." Wundt, too, attempts to belittle the psychic factor in
the evocation of dreams by asserting that "the phantasms of the
dream are perhaps unjustly regarded as pure hallucinations. Probably
most dream-representations are really illusions, inasmuch as they
emanate from the slight sensory impressions which are never
extinguished during sleep" (p. 359, et seq.). Weygandt has adopted
this view, and generalizes upon it. He asserts that "the most
immediate causes of all dream-representations are sensory stimuli to
which reproductive associations then attach themselves" (p. 17).
Tissie goes still further in suppressing the psychic sources of
excitation (p. 183): "Les reves d'origine absolument psychique
n'existent pas"; * and elsewhere (p. 6), "Les pensees de nos reves
nous viennent de dehors...." *(2)
-
* Dreams do not exist whose origin is totally psychic.
*(2) The thoughts of our dreams come from outside.
-
Those writers who, like the eminent philosopher Wundt, adopt a
middle course, do not hesitate to assert that in most dreams there
is a cooperation of the somatic stimuli and psychic stimuli which
are either unknown or are identified with the interests of the day.
We shall learn later that the problem of dream-formation may be
solved by the disclosure of an entirely unsuspected psychic source
of excitation. In the meanwhile we shall not be surprised at the
over-estimation of the influence of those stimuli which do not
originate in the psychic life. It is not merely because they alone may
easily be found, and even confirmed by experiment, but because the
somatic conception of the origin of dreams entirely corresponds with
the mode of thought prevalent in modern psychiatry. Here, it is
true, the mastery of the brain over the organism is most
emphatically stressed; but everything that might show that the psychic
life is independent of demonstrable organic changes, or spontaneous in
its manifestations, is alarming to the contemporary psychiatrist, as
though such an admission must mean a return to the old-world natural
philosophy and the metaphysical conception of the nature of the
soul. The distrust of the psychiatrist has placed the psyche under
tutelage, so to speak; it requires that none of the impulses of the
psyche shall reveal an autonomous power. Yet this attitude merely
betrays a lack of confidence in the stability of the causal
concatenation between the physical and the psychic. Even where on
investigation the psychic may be recognized as the primary cause of
a phenomenon, a more profound comprehension of the subject will one
day succeed in following up the path that leads to the organic basis
of the psychic. But where the psychic must, in the present state of
our knowledge, be accepted as the terminus, it need not on that
account be disavowed.
D. Why Dreams Are Forgotten After Waking
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That a dream fades away in the morning is proverbial. It is, indeed,
possible to recall it. For we know the dream, of course, only by
recalling it after waking; but we very often believe that we
remember it incompletely, that during the night there was more of it
than we remember. We may observe how the memory of a dream which in
the morning was still vivid fades in the course of the day, leaving
only a few trifling remnants. We are often aware that we have been
dreaming, but we do not know of what we have dreamed; and we are so
well used to this fact- that the dream is liable to be forgotten- that
we do not reject as absurd the possibility that we may have been
dreaming even when, in the morning, we know nothing either of the
content of the dream or of the fact that we have dreamed. On the other
hand, it often happens that dreams manifest an extraordinary power
of maintaining themselves in the memory. I have had occasion to
analyse, with my patients, dreams which occurred to them twenty-five
years or more previously, and I can remember a dream of my own which
is divided from the present day by at least thirty-seven years, and
yet has lost nothing of its freshness in my memory. All this is very
remarkable, and for the present incomprehensible.
The forgetting of dreams is treated in the most detailed manner by
Strumpell. This forgetting is evidently a complex phenomenon; for
Strumpell attributes it not to a single cause, but to quite a number
of causes.
In the first place, all those factors which induce forgetfulness
in the waking state determine also the forgetting of dreams. In the
waking state we commonly very soon forget a great many sensations
and perceptions because they are too slight to remember, and because
they are charged with only a slight amount of emotional feeling.
This is true also of many dream-images; they are forgotten because
they are too weak, while the stronger images in their neighbourhood
are remembered. However, the factor of intensity is in itself not
the only determinant of the preservation of dream-images; Strumpell,
as well as other authors (Calkins), admits that dream-images are often
rapidly forgotten although they are known to have been vivid, whereas,
among those that are retained in the memory, there are many that are
very shadowy and unmeaning. Besides, in the waking state one is wont
to forget rather easily things that have happened only once, and to
remember more readily things which occur repeatedly. But most
dream-images are unique experiences, * and this peculiarity would
contribute towards the forgetting of all dreams equally. Of much
greater significance is a third cause of forgetting. In order that
feelings, representations, ideas and the like should attain a
certain degree of memorability, it is important that they should not
remain isolated, but that they should enter into connections and
associations of an appropriate nature. If the words of a verse of
poetry are taken and mixed together, it will be very difficult to
remember them. "Properly placed, in a significant sequence, one word
helps another, and the whole, making sense, remains and is easily
and lastingly fixed in the memory. Contradictions, as a rule, are
retained with just as much difficulty and just as rarely as things
that are confused and disorderly." Now dreams, in most cases, lack
sense and order. Dream-compositions, by their very nature, are
insusceptible of being remembered, and they are forgotten because as a
rule they fall to pieces the very next moment. To be sure, these
conclusions are not entirely consistent with Radestock's observation
(p. 168), that we most readily retain just those dreams which are most
peculiar.
-
* Periodically recurrent dreams have been observed repeatedly.
Compare the collection made by Chabaneix.
-
According to Strumpell, other factors, deriving from the relation of
the dream to the waking state, are even more effective in causing us
to forget our dreams. The forgetfulness of dreams manifested by the
waking consciousness is evidently merely the counterpart of the fact
already mentioned, namely, that the dream hardly ever takes over an
orderly series of memories from the waking state, but only certain
details of these memories, which it removes from the habitual
psychic connections in which they are remembered in the waking
state. The dream-composition, therefore, has no place in the community
of the psychic series which fill the mind. It lacks all mnemonic aids.
"In this manner the dream-structure rises, as it were, from the soil
of our psychic life, and floats in psychic space like a cloud in the
sky, quickly dispelled by the first breath of reawakening life" (p.
87). This situation is accentuated by the fact that on waking the
attention is immediately besieged by the inrushing world of sensation,
so that very few dream-images are capable of withstanding its force.
They fade away before the impressions of the new day like the stars
before the light of the sun.
Finally, we should remember that the fact that most people take
but little interest in their dreams is conducive to the forgetting
of dreams. Anyone who for some time applies himself to the
investigation of dreams, and takes a special interest in them, usually
dreams more during that period than at any other; he remembers his
dreams more easily and more frequently.
Two other reasons for the forgetting of dreams, which Bonatelli
(cited by Benini) adds to those adduced by Strumpell, have already
been included in those enumerated above; namely, (1) that the
difference of the general sensation in the sleeping and the waking
state is unfavourable to mutual reproduction, and (2) that the
different arrangement of the material in the dream makes the dream
untranslatable, so to speak, for the waking consciousness.
It is therefore all the more remarkable, as Strumpell himself
observes, that, in spite of all these reasons for forgetting the
dream, so many dreams are retained in the memory. The continual
efforts of those who have written on the subject to formulate laws for
the remembering of dreams amount to an admission that here, too, there
is something puzzling and unexplained. Certain peculiarities
relating to the remembering of dreams have attracted particular
attention of late; for example, the fact that the dream which is
believed to be forgotten in the morning may be recalled in the
course of the day on the occasion of some perception which
accidentally touches the forgotten content of the dream (Radestock,
Tissie). But the whole recollection of dreams is open to an
objection which is calculated greatly to depreciate its value in
critical eyes. One may doubt whether our memory, which omits so much
from the dream, does not falsify what it retains.
This doubt as to the exactness of the reproduction of dreams is
expressed by Strumpell when he says: "It may therefore easily happen
that the waking consciousness involuntarily interpolates a great
many things in the recollection of the dream; one imagines that one
has dreamt all sorts of things which the actual dream did not
contain."
Jessen (p. 547) expresses himself in very decided terms:
"Moreover, we must not lose sight of the fact, hitherto little heeded,
that in the investigation and interpretation of coherent and logical
dreams we almost always take liberties with the truth when we recall a
dream to memory. Unconsciously and unintentionally we fill up the gaps
and supplement the dream-images. Rarely, and perhaps never, has a
connected dream been as connected as it appears to us in memory.
Even the most truth-loving person can hardly relate a dream without
exaggerating and embellishing it in some degree. The human mind so
greatly tends to perceive everything in a connected form that it
intentionally supplies the missing links in any dream which is in some
degree incoherent."
The observations of V. Eggers, though of course independently
conceived, read almost like a translation of Jessen's words:
"...L'observation des reves a ses difficultes speciales et le seul
moyen d'eviter toute erreur en pareille matiere est de confier au
papier sans le moindre retard ce que l'on vient d'eprouver et de
remarquer; sinon, l'oubli vient vite ou total ou partiel; l'oubli
total est sans gravite; mais l'oubli partiel est perfide: car si
l'on se met ensuite a raconter ce que l'on n'a pas oublie, on est
expose a completer par imagination les fragments incoherents et
disjoints fourni par la memoire... on devient artiste a son insu, et
le recit, periodiquement repete s'impose a la creance de son auteur,
qui, de bonne foi, le presente comme un fait authentique, dument
etabli selon les bonnes methodes...." *
-
* ...The observation of dreams has its special difficulties, and the
only way to avoid all error in such matter is to put on paper
without the least delay what has just been experienced and noticed;
otherwise, totally or partially the dream is quickly forgotten;
total forgetting is without seriousness; but partial forgetting is
treacherous: for, if one then starts to recount what has not been
forgotten, one is likely to supplement from the imagination the
incoherent and disjointed fragments provided by the memory....
unconsciously one becomes an artist, and the story, repeated from time
to time, imposes itself on the belief of its author, who, in good
faith, tells it as authentic fact, regularly established according
to proper methods....
-
Similarly Spitta, who seems to think that it is only in the
attempt to reproduce the dream that we bring order and arrangement
into loosely associated dream-elements- "turning juxtaposition into
concatenation; that is, adding the process of logical connection which
is absent in the dream."
Since we can test the reliability of our memory only by objective
means, and since such a test is impossible in the case of dreams,
which are our own personal experience, and for which we know no
other source than our memory, what value do our recollections of our
dreams possess?
E. The Psychological Peculiarities of Dreams
-
In our scientific investigation of dreams we start with the
assumption that dreams are a phenomenon of our own psychic activity;
yet the completed dream appears to us as something alien, whose
authorship we are so little inclined to recognize that we should be
just as willing to say "A dream came to me," as "I dreamed." Whence
this "psychic strangeness" of dreams? According to our exposition of
the sources of dreams, we must assume that it is not determined by the
material which finds its way into the dream-content, since this is for
the most part common both to dream-life and waking life. We might
ask ourselves whether this impression is not evoked by modifications
of the psychic processes in dreams, and we might even attempt to
suggest that the existence of such changes is the psychological
characteristic of dreams.
No one has more strongly emphasized the essential difference between
dream-life and waking life and drawn more far reaching conclusions
from this difference than G. Th. Fechner in certain observations
contained in his Elemente der Psychophysik (Part II, p. 520). He
believes that "neither the simple depression of conscious psychic life
under the main threshold," nor the distraction of the attention from
the influences of the outer world, suffices to explain the
peculiarities of dream-life as compared with waking life. He believes,
rather, that the arena of dreams is other than the arena of the waking
life of the mind. "If the arena of psychophysical activity were the
same during the sleeping and the waking state, the dream, in my
opinion, could only be a continuation of the waking ideational life at
a lower degree of intensity, so that it would have to partake of the
form and material of the latter. But this is by no means the case."
What Fechner really meant by such a transposition of the psychic
activity has never been made clear, nor has anybody else, to my
knowledge, followed the path which he indicates in this remark. An
anatomical interpretation in the sense of physiological localization
in the brain, or even a histological stratification of the cerebral
cortex, must of course be excluded. The idea might, however, prove
ingenious and fruitful if it could refer to a psychical apparatus
built up of a number of successive and connected systems.
Other authors have been content to give prominence to this or that
palpable psychological peculiarity of the dream-life, and even to take
this as a starting-point for more comprehensive attempts at
explanation.
It has been justly remarked that one of the chief peculiarities of
dream-life makes its appearance even in the state of falling asleep,
and may be defined as the sleep-heralding phenomenon. According to
Schleiermacher (p. 351), the distinguishing characteristic of the
waking state is the fact that its psychic activity occurs in the
form of ideas rather than in that of images. But the dream thinks
mainly in visual images, and it may be noted that with the approach of
sleep the voluntary activities become impeded in proportion as
involuntary representations make their appearance, the latter
belonging entirely to the category of images. The incapacity for
such ideational activities as we feel to be deliberately willed, and
the emergence of visual images, which is regularly connected with this
distraction- these are two constant characteristics of dreams, and
on psychological analysis we are compelled to recognize them as
essential characteristics of dream-life. As for the images themselves-
the hypnogogic hallucinations- we have learned that even in their
content they are identical with dream-images. *
-
* Silberer has shown by excellent examples how in the state of
falling asleep even abstract thoughts may be changed into visible
plastic images, which, of course, express them. (Jahrbuch,
Bleuler-Freud, vol. i, 1900.) I shall return to the discussion of
his findings later on.
-
Dreams, then, think preponderantly, but not exclusively, in visual
images. They make use also of auditory images, and, to a lesser
extent, of the other sensory impressions. Moreover, in dreams, as in
the waking state, many things are simply thought or imagined (probably
with the help of remnants of verbal conceptions). Characteristic of
dreams, however, are only those elements of their contents which
behave like images, that is, which more closely resemble perceptions
than mnemonic representations. Without entering upon a discussion of
the nature of hallucinations- a discussion familiar to every
psychiatrist- we may say, with every well-informed authority, that the
dream hallucinates- that is, that it replaces thoughts by
hallucinations. In this respect visual and acoustic impressions behave
in the same way. It has been observed that the recollection of a
succession of notes heard as we are falling asleep becomes
transformed, when we have fallen asleep, into a hallucination of the
same melody, to give place, each time we wake, to the fainter and
qualitatively different representations of the memory, and resuming,
each time we doze off again, its hallucinatory character.
The transformation of an idea into a hallucination is not the only
departure of the dream from the more or less corresponding waking
thought. From these images the dream creates a situation; it
represents something as actually present; it dramatizes an idea, as
Spitta (p. 145) puts it. But the peculiar character of this aspect
of the dream-life is completely intelligible only if we admit that
in dreaming we do not as a rule (the exceptions call for special
examination) suppose ourselves to be thinking, but actually
experiencing; that is, we accept the hallucination in perfectly good
faith. The criticism that one has experienced nothing, but that one
has merely been thinking in a peculiar manner- dreaming- occurs to
us only on waking. It is this characteristic which distinguishes the
genuine dream from the day-dream, which is never confused with
reality.
The characteristics of the dream-life thus far considered have
been summed up by Burdach (p. 476) as follows: "As characteristic
features of the dream we may state (a) that the subjective activity of
our psyche appears as objective, inasmuch as our perceptive
faculties apprehend the products of phantasy as though they were
sensory activities... (b) that sleep abrogates our voluntary action;
hence falling asleep involves a certain degree of passivity... The
images of sleep are conditioned by the relaxation of our powers of
will."
It now remains to account for the credulity of the mind in respect
to the dream-hallucinations which are able to make their appearance
only after the suspension of certain voluntary powers. Strumpell
asserts that in this respect the psyche behaves correctly and in
conformity with its mechanism. The dream-elements are by no means mere
representations, but true and actual experiences of the psyche,
similar to those which come to the waking state by way of the senses
(p. 34). Whereas in the waking state the mind thinks and imagines by
means of verbal images and language, in dreams it thinks and
imagines in actual perceptual images (p. 35). Dreams, moreover, reveal
a spatial consciousness, inasmuch as in dreams, just as in the
waking state, sensations and images are transposed into outer space
(p. 36). It must therefore be admitted that in dreams the mind
preserves the same attitude in respect of images and perceptions as in
the waking state (p. 43). And if it forms erroneous conclusions in
respect of these images and perceptions, this is due to the fact
that in sleep it is deprived of that criterion which alone can
distinguish between sensory perceptions emanating from within and
those coming from without. It is unable to subject its images to those
tests which alone can prove their objective reality. Further, it
neglects to differentiate between those images which can be
exchanged at will and those in respect of which there is no free
choice. It errs because it cannot apply the law of causality to the
content of its dreams (p. 58). In brief, its alienation from the outer
world is the very reason for its belief in its subjective dream-world.
Delboeuf arrives at the same conclusion through a somewhat different
line of argument. We believe in the reality of dream-pictures
because in sleep we have no other impressions with which to compare
them; because we are cut off from the outer world. But it is not
because we are unable, when asleep, to test our hallucinations that we
believe in their reality. Dreams can make us believe that we are
applying such tests- that we are touching, say, the rose that we see
in our dream; and yet we are dreaming. According to Delboeuf there
is no valid criterion that can show whether something is a dream or
a waking reality, except- and that only pragmatically- the fact of
waking. "I conclude that all that has been experienced between falling
asleep and waking is a delusion, if I find on waking that I am lying
undressed in bed" (p. 84). "I considered the images of my dream real
while I was asleep on account of the unsleeping mental habit of
assuming an outer world with which I can contrast my ego." *
-
* Haffner, like Delboeuf, has attempted to explain the act of
dreaming by the alteration which an abnormally introduced condition
must have upon the otherwise correct functioning of the intact psychic
apparatus; but he describes this condition in somewhat different
terms. He states that the first distinguishing mark of dreams is the
abolition of time and space, i.e., the emancipation of the
representation from the individual's position in the spatial and
temporal order. Associated with this is the second fundamental
character of dreams, the mistaking of the hallucinations,
imaginations, and phantasy-combinations for objective perceptions.
"The sum-total of the higher psychic functions, particularly the
formation of concepts, judgments, and conclusions on the one hand, and
free self-determination on the other hand, combine with the sensory
phantasy-images, and at all times have these as a substratum. These
activities too, therefore, participate in the erratic nature of the
dream-representations. We say they participate, for our faculties of
judgment and will are in themselves unaltered during sleep. As far
as their activity is concerned, we are just as shrewd and just as free
as in the waking state. A man cannot violate the laws of thought; that
is, even in a dream he cannot judge things to be identical which
present themselves to him as opposites. He can desire in a dream
only that which he regards as a good (sub ratione boni). But in this
application of the laws of thought and will the human intellect is led
astray in dreams by confusing one notion with another. Thus it happens
that in dreams we formulate and commit the greatest of contradictions,
while, on the other hand, we display the shrewdest judgment and arrive
at the most logical conclusions, and are able to make the most
virtuous and sacred resolutions. The lack of orientation is the
whole secret of our flights of phantasy in dreams, and the lack of
critical reflection and agreement with other minds is the main
source of the reckless extravagances of our judgments, hopes and
wishes in dreams" (p. 18).
-
If the turning-away from the outer world is accepted as the decisive
cause of the most conspicuous characteristics of our dreams, it will
be worth our while to consider certain subtle observations of
Burdach's, which will throw some light on the relation of the sleeping
psyche to the outer world, and at the same time serve to prevent our
over-estimating the importance of the above deductions. "Sleep,"
says Burdach, "results only under the condition that the mind is not
excited by sensory stimuli... yet it is not so much a lack of
sensory stimuli that conditions sleep as a lack of interest in them; *
some sensory impressions are even necessary in so far as they serve to
calm the mind; thus the miller can fall asleep only when he hears
the clatter of his mill, and he who finds it necessary, as a matter of
precaution, to burn a light at night, cannot fall asleep in the
dark" (p. 457).
-
* Compare with this the element of "Desinteret," in which
Claparede (1905) finds the mechanism of falling asleep.
-
"During sleep the psyche isolates itself from the outer world, and
withdraws from the periphery.... Nevertheless, the connection is not
entirely broken; if one did not hear and feel during sleep, but only
after waking, one would assuredly never be awakened at all. The
continuance of sensation is even more plainly shown by the fact that
we are not always awakened by the mere force of the sensory
impression, but by its relation to the psyche. An indifferent word
does not arouse the sleeper, but if called by name he wakes... so that
even in sleep the psyche discriminates between sensations.... Hence
one may even be awakened by the obliteration of a sensory stimulus, if
this is related to anything of imagined importance. Thus one man wakes
when the nightlight is extinguished, and the miller when his mill
comes to a standstill; that is, waking is due to the cessation of a
sensory activity, and this presupposes that the activity has been
perceived, but has not disturbed the mind, its effect being
indifferent, or actually reassuring" (p. 46, etc.).
Even if we are willing to disregard these by no means trifling
objections, we must yet admit that the qualities of dream-life
hitherto considered, which are attributed to withdrawal from the outer
world, cannot fully account for the strangeness of dreams. For
otherwise it would be possible to reconvert the hallucinations of
the dream into mental images, and the situations of the dream into
thoughts, and thus to achieve the task of dream-interpretation. Now
this is precisely what we do when we reproduce a dream from memory
after waking, and no matter whether we are fully or only partially
successful in this retranslation, the dream still remains as
mysterious as before.
Furthermore, all writers unhesitatingly assume that still other
and profounder changes take place in the plastic material of waking
life. Strumpell seeks to isolate one of these changes as follows:
(p. 17) "With the cessation of active sensory perception and of normal
consciousness, the psyche is deprived of the soil in which its
feelings, desires, interests, and activities are rooted. Those psychic
states, feelings, interests, and valuations, which in the waking state
adhere to memory-images, succumb to an obscuring pressure, in
consequence of which their connection with these images is severed;
the perceptual images of things, persons, localities, events and
actions of the waking state are, individually, abundantly
reproduced, but none of these brings with it its psychic value.
Deprived of this, they hover in the mind dependent on their own
resources..."
This annihilation of psychic values, which is in turn referred to
a turning away from the outer world, is, according to Strumpell,
very largely responsible for the impression of strangeness with
which the dream is coloured in our memory.
We have seen that the very fact of falling asleep involves a
renunciation of one of the psychic activities- namely, the voluntary
guidance of the flow of ideas. Thus the supposition obtrudes itself
(though it is in any case a natural one) that the state of sleep may
extend even to the psychic functions. One or another of these
functions is perhaps entirely suspended; we have now to consider
whether the rest continue to operate undisturbed, whether they are
able to perform their normal work under the circumstances. The idea
occurs to us that the peculiarities of the dream may be explained by
the restricted activity of the psyche during sleep, and the impression
made by the dream upon our waking judgment tends to confirm this view.
The dream is incoherent; it reconciles, without hesitation, the
worst contradictions; it admits impossibilities; it disregards the
authoritative knowledge of the waking state, and it shows us as
ethically and morally obtuse. He who should behave in the waking state
as his dreams represent him as behaving would be considered insane. He
who in the waking state should speak as he does in his dreams, or
relate such things as occur in his dreams, would impress us as a
feeble-minded or muddle-headed person. It seems to us, then, that we
are merely speaking in accordance with the facts of the case when we
rate psychic activity in dreams very low, and especially when we
assert that in dreams the higher intellectual activities are suspended
or at least greatly impaired.
With unusual unanimity (the exceptions will be dealt with elsewhere)
the writers on the subject have pronounced such judgments as lead
immediately to a definite theory or explanation of dream-life. It is
now time to supplement the resume which I have just given by a
series of quotations from a number of authors- philosophers and
physicians- bearing upon the psychological characteristics of the
dream.
According to Lemoine, the incoherence of the dream-images is the
sole essential characteristic of the dream.
Maury agrees with him (Le Sommeil, p. 163): "Il n'y a pas des
reves absolument raisonnables et qui ne contiennent quelque
incoherence, quelque absurdite." *
-
* There are no dreams which are absolutely reasonable which do not
contain some incoherence, some absurdity.
-
According to Hegel, quoted by Spitta, the dream lacks any
intelligible objective coherence.
Dugas says: "Les reve, c'est l'anarchie psychique, affective et
mentale, c'est le jeu des fonctions livrees a elles-memes et
s'exercant sans controle et sans but; dans le reve l'esprit est un
automate spirituel." *
-
* The dream is psychic anarchy, emotional and intellectual, the
playing of functions, freed of themselves and performing without
control and without end; in the dream, the mind is a spiritual
automaton.
-
"The relaxation, dissolution, and promiscuous confusion of the world
of ideas and images held together in waking life by the logical
power of the central ego" is conceded even by Volkelt (p. 14),
according to whose theory the psychic activity during sleep appears to
be by no means aimless.
The absurdity of the associations of ideas which occur in dreams can
hardly be more strongly stigmatized than it was by Cicero (De
Divinatione, II. lxxi): "Nihil tam praepostere, tam incondite, tam
monstruose cogitari potest, quod non possimus somniare." *
-
* There is no imaginable thing too absurd, too involved, or too
abnormal for us to dream about.
-
Fechner says (p. 522): "It is as though the psychological activity
of the brain of a reasonable person were to migrate into that of a
fool."
Radestock (p. 145): "It seems indeed impossible to recognize any
stable laws in this preposterous behaviour. Withdrawing itself from
the strict policing of the rational will that guides our waking ideas,
and from the processes of attention, the dream, in crazy sport, whirls
all things about in kaleidoscopic confusion."
Hildebrandt (p. 45): "What wonderful jumps the dreamer permits
himself, for instance, in his chain of reasoning! With what
unconcern he sees the most familiar laws of experience turned upside
down! What ridiculous contradictions he is able to tolerate in the
order of nature and of society, before things go too far, and the very
excess of nonsense leads to an awakening! Sometimes we quite
innocently calculate that three times three make twenty; and we are
not in the least surprised if a dog recites poetry to us, if a dead
person walks to his grave, or if a rock floats on the water. We
solemnly go to visit the duchy of Bernburg or the principality of
Liechtenstein in order to inspect its navy; or we allow ourselves to
be recruited as a volunteer by Charles XII just before the battle of
Poltava."
Binz (p. 33), referring to the theory of dreams resulting from these
impressions, says: "Of ten dreams nine at least have an absurd
content. We unite in them persons or things which do not bear the
slightest relation to one another. In the next moment, as in a
kaleidoscope, the grouping changes to one, if possible, even more
nonsensical and irrational than before; and so the shifting play of
the drowsy brain continues, until we wake, put a hand to our forehead,
and ask ourselves whether we still really possess the faculty of
rational imagination and thought."
Maury, Le Sommeil (p. 50) makes, in respect of the relation of the
dream-image to the waking thoughts, a comparison which a physician
will find especially impressive: "La production de ces images que chez
l'homme eveille fait le plus souvent naitre la volonte, correspond,
pour l'intelligence, a ce que sont pour la motilite certains
mouvements que nous offrent la choree et les affections
paralytiques...." * For the rest, he considers the dream "toute une
serie de degradations de la faculte pensante et raisonnante" *(2)
(p. 27).
-
* The production of those images which, in the waking man, most
often excite the will, correspond, for the mind, to those which are,
for the motility, certain movements that offer St. Vitus' dance and
paralytic affections...
*(2) A whole series of degradations of the faculty of thinking and
reasoning.
-
It is hardly necessary to cite the utterances of those authors who
repeat Maury's assertion in respect of the higher individual psychic
activities.
According to Strumpell, in dreams- and even, of course, where the
nonsensical nature of the dream is not obvious- all the logical
operations of the mind, based on relations and associations, recede
into the background (p. 26). According to Spitta (p. 148) ideas in
dreams are entirely withdrawn from the laws of causality; while
Radestock and others emphasize the feebleness of judgment and
logical inference peculiar to dreams. According to Jodl (p. 123),
there is no criticism in dreams, no correcting of a series of
perceptions by the content of consciousness as a whole. The same
author states that "All the activities of consciousness occur in
dreams, but they are imperfect, inhibited, and mutually isolated." The
contradictions of our conscious knowledge which occur in dreams are
explained by Stricker and many others on the ground that facts are
forgotten in dreams, or that the logical relations between ideas are
lost (p. 98), etc., etc.
Those authors who, in general, judge so unfavourably of the
psychic activities of the dreamer nevertheless agree that dreams do
retain a certain remnant of psychic activity. Wundt, whose teaching
has influenced so many other investigators of dream-problems,
expressly admits this. We may ask, what are the nature and composition
of the remnants of normal psychic life which manifest themselves in
dreams? It is pretty generally acknowledged that the reproductive
faculty, the memory, seems to be the least affected in dreams; it may,
indeed, show a certain superiority over the same function in waking
life
lines of argument and objections. When the whole mass of these
dream-thoughts is subjected to the pressure of the dream-work,
during which the fragments are turned about, broken up and
compacted, somewhat like drifting ice, the question arises: What
becomes of the logical ties which had hitherto provided the
framework of the structure? What representation do if, because, as
though, although, either- or and all the other conjunctions, without
which we cannot understand a phrase or a sentence, receive in our
dreams?
To begin with, we must answer that the dream has at its disposal
no means of representing these logical relations between the
dream-thoughts. In most cases it disregards all these conjunctions,
and undertakes the elaboration only of the material content of the
dream-thoughts. It is left to the interpretation of the dream to
restore the coherence which the dream-work has destroyed.
If dreams lack the ability to express these relations, the psychic
material of which they are wrought must be responsible for this
defect. As a matter of fact, the representative arts- painting and
sculpture- are similarly restricted, as compared with poetry, which is
able to employ speech; and here again the reason for this limitation
lies in the material by the elaboration of which the two plastic
arts endeavour to express something. Before the art of painting
arrived at an understanding of the laws of expression by which it is
bound, it attempted to make up for this deficiency. In old paintings
little labels hung out of the mouths of the persons represented,
giving in writing the speech which the artist despaired of
expressing in the picture.
Here, perhaps an objection will be raised, challenging the assertion
that our dreams dispense with the representation of logical relations.
There are dreams in which the most complicated intellectual operations
take place; arguments for and against are adduced, jokes and
comparisons are made, just as in our waking thoughts. But here again
appearances are deceptive; if the interpretation of such dreams is
continued it will be found that all these things are dream-material,
not the representation of intellectual activity in the dream. The
content of the dream-thoughts is reproduced by the apparent thinking
in our dreams, but not the relations of the dream-thoughts to one
another, in the determination of which relations thinking consists.
I shall give some examples of this. But the fact which is most
easily established is that all speeches which occur in dreams, and
which are expressly designated as such, are unchanged or only slightly
modified replicas of speeches which occur likewise among the
memories in the dream-material. Often the speech is only an allusion
to an event contained in the dream-thoughts; the meaning of the
dream is quite different.
However, I shall not dispute the fact that even critical
thought-activity, which does not simply repeat material from the
dream-thoughts, plays a part in dream-formation. I shall have to
explain the influence of this factor at the close of this
discussion. It will then become clear that this thought activity is
evoked not by the dream-thoughts, but by the dream itself, after it
is, in a certain sense, already completed.
Provisionally, then, it is agreed that the logical relations between
the dream-thoughts do not obtain any particular representation in
the dream. For instance, where there is a contradiction in the
dream, this is either a contradiction directed against the dream
itself or a contradiction contained in one of the dream-thoughts; a
contradiction in the dream corresponds with a contradiction between
the dream-thoughts only in the most indirect and intermediate fashion.
But just as the art of painting finally succeeded in depicting, in
the persons represented, at least the intentions behind their words-
tenderness, menace, admonition, and the like- by other means than by
floating labels, so also the dream has found it possible to render
an account of certain of the logical relations between its
dream-thoughts by an appropriate modification of the peculiar method
of dream-representation. It will be found by experience that different
dreams go to different lengths in this respect; while one dream will
entirely disregard the logical structure of its material, another
attempts to indicate it as completely as possible. In so doing, the
dream departs more or less widely from the text which it has to
elaborate; and its attitude is equally variable in respect to the
temporal articulation of the dream-thoughts, if such has been
established in the unconscious (as, for example, in the dream of
Irma's injection).
But what are the means by which the dream-work is enabled to
indicate those relations in the dream-material which are difficult
to represent? I shall attempt to enumerate these, one by one.
In the first place, the dream renders an account of the connection
which is undeniably present between all the portions of the
dream-thoughts by combining this material into a unity as a
situation or a proceeding. It reproduces logical connections in the
form of simultaneity; in this case it behaves rather like the
painter who groups together all the philosophers or poets in a picture
of the School of Athens, or Parnassus. They never were assembled in
any hall or on any mountain-top, although to the reflective mind
they do constitute a community.
The dream carries out in detail this mode of representation.
Whenever it shows two elements close together, it vouches for a
particularly intimate connection between their corresponding
representatives in the dream-thoughts. It is as in our method of
writing: to signifies that the two letters are to be pronounced as one
syllable; while t with o following a blank space indicates that t is
the last letter of one word and o the first letter of another.
Consequently, dream-combinations are not made up of arbitrary,
completely incongruous elements of the dream-material, but of elements
that are pretty intimately related in the dream-thoughts also.
For representing causal relations our dreams employ two methods,
which are essentially reducible to one. The method of representation
more frequently employed- in cases, for example, where the
dream-thoughts are to the effect: "Because this was thus and thus,
this and that must happen"- consists in making the subordinate
clause a prefatory dream and joining the principal clause on to it
in the form of the main dream. If my interpretation is correct, the
sequence may likewise be reversed. The principal clause always
corresponds to that part of the dream which is elaborated in the
greatest detail.
An excellent example of such a representation of causality was
once provided by a female patient, whose dream I shall subsequently
give in full. The dream consisted of a short prologue, and of a very
circumstantial and very definitely centred dream-composition. I
might entitle it "Flowery language." The preliminary dream is as
follows: She goes to the two maids in the kitchen and scolds them
for taking so long to prepare "a little bite of food." She also sees a
very large number of heavy kitchen utensils in the kitchen turned
upside down in order to drain, even heaped up in stacks. The two maids
go to fetch water, and have, as it were, to climb into a river,
which reaches up to the house or into the courtyard.
Then follows the main dream, which begins as follows: She is
climbing down from a height over a curiously shaped trellis, and she
is glad that her dress doesn't get caught anywhere, etc. Now the
preliminary dream refers to the house of the lady's parents. The words
which are spoken in the kitchen are words which she has probably often
heard spoken by her mother. The piles of clumsy pots and pans are
taken from an unpretentious hardware shop located in the same house.
The second part of this dream contains an allusion to the dreamer's
father, who was always pestering the maids, and who during a flood-
for the house stood close to the bank of the river- contracted a fatal
illness. The thought which is concealed behind the preliminary dream
is something like this: "Because I was born in this house, in such
sordid and unpleasant surroundings..." The main dream takes up the
same thought, and presents it in a form that has been altered by a
wish-fulfilment: "I am of exalted origin." Properly then: "Because I
am of such humble origin, the course of my life has been so and so."
As far as I can see, the division of a dream into two unequal
portions does not always signify a causal relation between the
thoughts of the two portions. It often seems as though in the two
dreams the same material were presented from different points of view;
this is certainly the case when a series of dreams, dreamed the same
night, end in a seminal emission, the somatic need enforcing a more
and more definite expression. Or the two dreams have proceeded from
two separate centres in the dream-material, and they overlap one
another in the content, so that the subject which in one dream
constitutes the centre cooperates in the other as an allusion, and
vice versa. But in a certain number of dreams the division into
short preliminary dreams and long subsequent dreams actually signifies
a causal relation between the two portions. The other method of
representing the causal relation is employed with less comprehensive
material, and consists in the transformation of an image in the
dream into another image, whether it be of a person or a thing. Only
where this transformation is actually seen occurring in the dream
shall we seriously insist on the causal relation; not where we
simply note that one thing has taken the place of another. I said that
both methods of representing the causal relation are really
reducible to the same method; in both cases causation is represented
by succession, sometimes by the succession of dreams, sometimes by the
immediate transformation of one image into another. In the great
majority of cases, of course, the causal relation is not represented
at all, but is effaced amidst the succession of elements that is
unavoidable even in the dream-process.
Dreams are quite incapable of expressing the alternative either- or;
it is their custom to take both members of this alternative into the
same context, as though they had an equal right to be there. A classic
example of this is contained in the dream of Irma's injection. Its
latent thoughts obviously mean: I am not responsible for the
persistence of Irma's pains; the responsibility rests either with
her resistance to accepting the solution or with the fact that she
is living under unfavourable sexual conditions, which I am unable to
change, or her pains are not hysterical at all, but organic. The
dream, however, carries out all these possibilities, which are
almost mutually exclusive, and is quite ready to add a fourth solution
derived from the dream-wish. After interpreting the dream, I then
inserted the either- or in its context in the dream-thoughts.
But when in narrating a dream the narrator is inclined to employ the
alternative either- or: "It was either a garden or a living-room,"
etc., there is not really an alternative in the dream-thoughts, but an
and- a simple addition. When we use either- or we are as a rule
describing a quality of vagueness in some element of the dream, but
a vagueness which may still be cleared up. The rule to be applied in
this case is as follows: The individual members of the alternative are
to be treated as equal and connected by an and. For instance, after
waiting long and vainly for the address of a friend who is
travelling in Italy, I dream that I receive a telegram which gives
me the address. On the telegraph form I see printed in blue letters:
the first word is blurred- perhaps via or villa; the second is
distinctly Sezerno, or even (Casa). The second word, which reminds
me of Italian names, and of our discussions on etymology, also
expresses my annoyance in respect of the fact that my friend has
kept his address a secret from me; but each of the possible first
three words may be recognized on analysis as an independent and
equally justifiable starting-point in the concatenation of ideas.
During the night before the funeral of my father I dreamed of a
printed placard, a card or poster rather like the notices in the
waiting-rooms of railway stations which announce that smoking is
prohibited. The sign reads either:
-
You are requested to shut the eyes
or
You are requested to shut one eye
-
an alternative which I am in the habit of representing in the
following form:
-
- the
You are requested to shut eye(s).
- one
-
Each of the two versions has its special meaning, and leads along
particular paths in the dream-interpretation. I had made the
simplest possible funeral arrangements, for I knew what the deceased
thought about such matters. Other members of the family, however,
did not approve of such puritanical simplicity; they thought we should
feel ashamed in the presence of the other mourners. Hence one of the
wordings of the dream asks for the shutting of one eye, that is to
say, it asks that people should show consideration. The significance
of the vagueness, which is here represented by an either- or, is
plainly to be seen. The dream-work has not succeeded in concocting a
coherent and yet ambiguous wording for the dream-thoughts. Thus the
two principal trains of thought are separated from each other, even in
the dream-content.
In some few cases the division of a dream into two equal parts
expresses the alternative which the dream finds it so difficult to
present.
The attitude of dreams to the category of antithesis and
contradiction is very striking. This category is simply ignored; the
word No does not seem to exist for a dream. Dreams are particularly
fond of reducing antitheses to uniformity. or representing them as one
and the same thing. Dreams likewise take the liberty of representing
any element whatever by its desired opposite, so that it is at first
impossible to tell, in respect of any element which is capable of
having an opposite, whether it is contained in the dream-thoughts in
the negative or the positive sense. * In one of the recently cited
dreams, whose introductory portion we have already interpreted
("because my origin is so and so"), the dreamer climbs down over a
trellis, and holds a blossoming bough in her hands. Since this picture
suggests to her the angel in paintings of the Annunciation (her own
name is Mary) bearing a lily-stem in his hand, and the white-robed
girls walking in procession on Corpus Christi Day, when the streets
are decorated with green boughs, the blossoming bough in the dream
is quite clearly an allusion to sexual innocence. But the bough is
thickly studded with red blossoms, each of which resembles a camellia.
At the end of her walk (so the dream continues) the blossoms are
already beginning to fall; then follow unmistakable allusions to
menstruation. But this very bough, which is carried like a lily-stem
and as though by an innocent girl, is also an allusion to Camille,
who, as we know, usually wore a white camellia, but a red one during
menstruation. The same blossoming bough ("the flower of maidenhood" in
Goethe's songs of the miller's daughter) represents at once sexual
innocence and its opposite. Moreover, the same dream, which
expresses the dreamer's joy at having succeeded in passing through
life unsullied, hints in several places (as in the falling of the
blossom) at the opposite train of thought, namely, that she had been
guilty of various sins against sexual purity (that is, in her
childhood). In the analysis of the dream we may clearly distinguish
the two trains of thought, of which the comforting one seems to be
superficial, and the reproachful one more profound. The two are
diametrically opposed to each other, and their similar yet contrasting
elements have been represented by identical dream-elements.
-
* From a work of K. Abel's, Der Gegensinn der Urworte, (1884), see
my review of it in the Bleuler-Freud Jahrbuch, ii (1910) (Ges.
Schriften Vol. X). I learned the surprising fact, which is confirmed
by other philologists, that the oldest languages behaved just as
dreams do in this regard. They had originally only one word for both
extremes in a series of qualities or activities (strong- weak, old-
young, far- near, bind- separate), and formed separate designations
for the two opposites only secondarily, by slight modifications of the
common primitive word. Abel demonstrates a very large number of
those relationships in ancient Egyptian, and points to distinct
remnants of the same development in the Semitic and Indo-Germanic
languages.
-
The mechanism of dream-formation is favourable in the highest degree
to only one of the logical relations. This relation is that of
similarity, agreement, contiguity, just as; a relation which may be
represented in our dreams, as no other can be, by the most varied
expedients. The screening which occurs in the dream-material, or the
cases of just as are the chief points of support for
dream-formation, and a not inconsiderable part of the dream-work
consists in creating new screenings of this kind in cases where
those that already exist are prevented by the resistance of the
censorship from making their way into the dream. The effort towards
condensation evinced by the dream-work facilitates the
representation of a relation of similarity.
Similarity, agreement, community, are quite generally expressed in
dreams by contraction into a unity, which is either already found in
the dream-material or is newly created. The first case may be referred
to as identification, the second as composition. Identification is
used where the dream is concerned with persons, composition where
things constitute the material to be unified; but compositions are
also made of persons. Localities are often treated as persons.
Identification consists in giving representation in the
dream-content to only one of two or more persons who are related by
some common feature, while the second person or other persons appear
to be suppressed as far as the dream is concerned. In the dream this
one "screening" person enters into all the relations and situations
which derive from the persons whom he screens. In cases of
composition, however, when persons are combined, there are already
present in the dream-image features which are characteristic of, but
not common to, the persons in question, so that a new unity, a
composite person, appears as the result of the union of these
features. The combination itself may be effected in various ways.
Either the dream-person bears the name of one of the persons to whom
he refers- and in this case we simply know, in a manner that is
quite analogous to knowledge in waking life, that this or that
person is intended- while the visual features belong to another
person; or the dream-image itself is compounded of visual features
which in reality are derived from the two. Also, in place of the
visual features, the part played by the second person may be
represented by the attitudes and gestures which are usually ascribed
to him by the words he speaks, or by the situations in which he is
placed. In this latter method of characterization the sharp
distinction between the identification and the combination of
persons begins to disappear. But it may also happen that the formation
of such a composite person is unsuccessful. The situations or
actions of the dream are then attributed to one person, and the other-
as a rule the more important- is introduced as an inactive
spectator. Perhaps the dreamer will say: "My mother was there too"
(Stekel). Such an element of the dream-content is then comparable to a
determinative in hieroglyphic script which is not meant to be
expressed, but is intended only to explain another sign.
The common feature which justifies the union of two persons- that is
to say, which enables it to be made- may either be represented in
the dream or it may be absent. As a rule, identification or
composition of persons actually serves to avoid the necessity of
representing this common feature. Instead of repeating: "A is
ill-disposed towards me, and so is B," I make, in my dream, a
composite person of A and B; or I conceive A as doing something
which is alien to his character, but which is characteristic of B. The
dream-person obtained in this way appears in the dream in some new
connection, and the fact that he signifies both A and B justifies my
inserting that which is common to both persons- their hostility
towards me- at the proper place in the dream-interpretation. In this
manner I often achieve a quite extraordinary degree of condensation of
the dream-content; I am able to dispense with the direct
representation of the very complicated relations belonging to one
person, if I can find a second person who has an equal claim to some
of these relations. It will be readily understood how far this
representation by means of identification may circumvent the censoring
resistance which sets up such harsh conditions for the dream-work. The
thing that offends the censorship may reside in those very ideas which
are connected in the dream-material with the one person; I now find
a second person, who likewise stands in some relation to the
objectionable material, but only to a part of it. Contact at that
one point which offends the censorship now justifies my formation of a
composite person, who is characterized by the indifferent features
of each. This person, the result of combination or identification,
being free of the censorship, is now suitable for incorporation in the
dream-content. Thus, by the application of dream-condensation, I
have satisfied the demands of the dream-censorship.
When a common feature of two persons is represented in a dream, this
is usually a hint to look for another concealed common feature, the
representation of which is made impossible by the censorship. Here a
displacement of the common feature has occurred, which in some
degree facilitates representation. From the circumstance that the
composite person is shown to me in the dream with an indifferent
common feature, I must infer that another common feature which is by
no means indifferent exists in the dream-thoughts.
Accordingly, the identification or combination of persons serves
various purposes in our dreams; in the first place, that of
representing a feature common to two persons; secondly, that of
representing a displaced common feature; and, thirdly, that of
expressly a community of features which is merely wished for. As the
wish for a community of features in two persons often coincides with
the interchanging of these persons, this relation also is expressed in
dreams by identification. In the dream of Irma's injection I wish to
exchange one patient for another- that is to say, I wish this other
person to be my patient, as the former person has been; the dream
deals with this wish by showing me a person who is called Irma, but
who is examined in a position such as I have had occasion to see
only the other person occupy. In the dream about my uncle this
substitution is made the centre of the dream; I identify myself with
the minister by judging and treating my colleagues as shabbily as
lie does.
It has been my experience- and to this I have found no exception-
that every dream treats of oneself. Dreams are absolutely egoistic. *
In cases where not my ego but only a strange person occurs in the
dream-content, I may safely assume that by means of identification
my ego is concealed behind that person. I am permitted to supplement
my ego. On other occasions, when my ego appears in the dream, the
situation in which it is placed tells me that another person is
concealing himself, by means of identification, behind the ego. In
this case I must be prepared to find that in the interpretation I
should transfer something which is connected with this person- the
hidden common feature- to myself. There are also dreams in which my
ego appears together with other persons who, when the identification
is resolved, once more show themselves to be my ego. Through these
identifications I shall then have to connect with my ego certain ideas
to which the censorship has objected. I may also give my ego
multiple representation in my dream, either directly or by means of
identification with other people. By means of several such
identifications an extraordinary amount of thought material may be
condensed. *(2) That one's ego should appear in the same dream several
times or in different forms is fundamentally no more surprising than
that it should appear, in conscious thinking, many times and in
different places or in different relations: as, for example, in the
sentence: "When I think what a healthy child I was."
-
* Cf. here the observations made in chapter V.
*(2) If I do not know behind which of the persons appearing in the
dream I am to look for my ego. I observe the following rule: That
person in the dream who is subject to an emotion which I am aware of
while asleep is the one that conceals my ego.
-
Still easier than in the case of persons is the resolution of
identifications in the case of localities designated by their own
names, as here the disturbing influence of the all-powerful ego is
lacking. In one of my dreams of Rome (chapter V., B.) the name of
the place in which I find myself is Rome: I am surprised, however,
by a large number of German placards at a street corner. This last
is a wish-fulfilment, which immediately suggests Prague; the wish
itself probably originated at a period of my youth when I was imbued
with a German nationalistic spirit which today is quite subdued. At
the time of my dream I was looking forward to meeting a friend in
Prague; the identification of Rome with Prague is therefore
explained by a desired common feature; I would rather meet my friend
in Rome than in Prague; for the purpose of this meeting I should
like to exchange Prague for Rome.
The possibility of creating composite formations is one of the chief
causes of the fantastic character so common in dreams. in that it
introduces into the dream-content elements which could never have been
objects of perception. The psychic process which occurs in the
creation of composite formations is obviously the same as that which
we employ in conceiving or figuring a dragon or a centaur in our
waking senses. The only difference is that, in the fantastic creations
of waking life, the impression intended is itself the decisive factor,
while the composite formation in the dream is determined by a
factor- the common feature in the dream-thoughts- which is independent
of its form. Composite formations in dreams may be achieved in a great
many different ways. In the most artless of these methods, only the
properties of the one thing are represented, and this representation
is accompanied by a knowledge that they refer to another object
also. A more careful technique combines features of the one object
with those of the other in a new image, while it makes skillful use of
any really existing resemblances between the two objects. The new
creation may prove to be wholly absurd, or even successful as a
phantasy, according as the material and the wit employed in
constructing it may permit. If the objects to be condensed into a
unity are too incongruous, the dream-work is content with creating a
composite formation with a comparatively distinct nucleus, to which
are attached more indefinite modifications. The unification into one
image has here been to some extent unsuccessful; the two
representations overlap one another, and give rise to something like a
contest between the visual images. Similar representations might be
obtained in a drawing if one were to attempt to give form to a unified
abstraction of disparate perceptual images.
Dreams naturally abound in such composite formations; I have given
several examples of these in the dreams already analysed, and will now
cite more such examples. In the dream earlier in this chapter which
describes the career of my patient in flowery language, the
dream-ego carries a spray of blossoms in her hand which, as we have
seen, signifies at once sexual innocence and sexual transgression.
Moreover, from the manner in which the blossoms are set on, they
recall cherry-blossom; the blossoms themselves, considered singly, are
camellias, and finally the whole spray gives the dreamer the
impression of an exotic plant. The common feature in the elements of
this composite formation is revealed by the dream-thoughts. The
blossoming spray is made up of allusions to presents by which she
was induced or was to have been induced to behave in a manner
agreeable to the giver. So it was with cherries in her childhood,
and with a camellia-tree in her later years; the exotic character is
an allusion to a much-travelled naturalist, who sought to win her
favour by means of a drawing of a flower. Another female patient
contrives a composite mean out of bathing machines at a seaside
resort, country privies, and the attics of our city dwelling-houses. A
reference to human nakedness and exposure is common to the first two
elements; and we may infer from their connection with the third
element that (in her childhood) the garret was likewise the scene of
bodily exposure. A dreamer of the male sex makes a composite
locality out of two places in which "treatment" is given- my office
and the assembly rooms in which he first became acquainted with his
wife. Another, a female patient, after her elder brother has
promised to regale her with caviar, dreams that his legs are covered
all over with black beads of caviar. The two elements, taint in a
moral sense and the recollection of a cutaneous eruption in
childhood which made her legs look as though studded over with red
instead of black spots, have here combined with the beads of caviar to
form a new idea- the idea of what she gets from her brother. In this
dream parts of the human body are treated as objects, as is usually
the case in dreams. In one of the dreams recorded by Ferenczi there
occurs a composite formation made up of the person of a physician
and a horse, and this composite being wears a night-shirt. The
common feature in these three components was revealed in the analysis,
after the nightshirt had been recognized as an allusion to the
father of the dreamer in a scene of childhood. In each of the three
cases there was some object of her sexual curiosity. As a child she
had often been taken by her nurse to the army stud, where she had
the amplest opportunity to satisfy her curiosity, at that time still
uninhibited.
I have already stated that the dream has no means of expressing
the relation of contradiction, contrast, negation. I shall now
contradict this assertion for the first time. A certain number of
cases of what may be summed up under the word contrast obtain
representation, as we have seen, simply by means of identification-
that is when an exchange, a substitution, can be bound up with the
contrast. Of this we have cited repeated examples. Certain other of
the contrasts in the dream-thoughts, which perhaps come under the
category of inverted, united into the opposite, are represented in
dreams in the following remarkable manner, which may almost be
described as witty. The inversion does not itself make its way into
the dream-content, but manifests its presence in the material by the
fact that a part of the already formed dream-content which is, for
other reasons, closely connected in context is- as it were
subsequently- inverted. It is easier to illustrate this process than
to describe it. In the beautiful "Up and Down" dream (this chapter,
A.), the dream-representation of ascending is an inversion of its
prototype in the dream-thoughts: that is, of the introductory scene of
Daudet's Sappho; in the dream, climbing is difficult at first and easy
later on, whereas, in the novel, it is easy at first, and later
becomes more and more difficult. Again, above and below, with
reference to the dreamer's brother, are reversed in the dream. This
points to a relation of inversion or contrast between two parts of the
material in the dream-thoughts, which indeed we found in them, for
in the childish phantasy of the dreamer he is carried by his nurse,
while in the novel, on the contrary, the hero carries his beloved.
My dream of Goethe's attack on Herr M (to be cited later) likewise
contains an inversion of this sort, which must be set right before the
dream can be interpreted. In this dream, Goethe attacks a young man,
Herr M; the reality, as contained in the dream-thoughts, is that an
eminent man, a friend of mine, has been attacked by an unknown young
author. In the dream I reckon time from the date of Goethe's death; in
reality the reckoning was made from the year in which the paralytic
was born. The thought which influences the dream-material reveals
itself as my opposition to the treatment of Goethe as though he were a
lunatic. "It is the other way about," says the dream; "if you don't
understand the book it is you who are feeble-minded, not the
author." All these dreams of inversion, moreover, seem to me to
imply an allusion to the contemptuous phrase, "to turn one's back upon
a person" (German: einem die Kehrseite zeigen, lit. to show a person
one's backside): cf. the inversion in respect of the dreamer's brother
in the Sappho dream. It is further worth noting how frequently
inversion is employed in precisely those dreams which are inspired
by repressed homosexual impulses.
Moreover, inversion, or transformation into the opposite, is one
of the most favoured and most versatile methods of representation
which the dream-work has at its disposal. It serves, in the first
place, to enable the wish-fulfilment to prevail against a definite
element of the dream-thoughts. "If only it were the other way
about!" is often the best expression for the reaction of the ego
against a disagreeable recollection. But inversion becomes
extraordinarily useful in the service of the censorship, for it
effects, in the material to be represented, a degree of distortion
which at first simply paralyses our understanding of the dream. It
is therefore always permissible, if a dream stubbornly refuses to
surrender its meaning, to venture on the experimental inversion of
definite portions of its manifest content. Then, not infrequently,
everything becomes clear.
Besides the inversion of content, the temporal inversion must not be
overlooked. A frequent device of dream-distortion consists in
presenting the final issue of the event or the conclusion of the train
of thought at the beginning of the dream, and appending at the end
of the dream the premises of the conclusion, or the causes of the
event. Anyone who forgets this technical device of dream-distortion
stands helpless before the problem of dream-interpretation. *
-
* The hysterical attack often employs the same device of temporal
inversion in order to conceal its meaning from the observer. The
attack of a hysterical girl, for example, consists in enacting a
little romance, which she has imagined in the unconscious in
connection with an encounter in a tram. A man, attracted by the beauty
of her foot, addresses her while she is reading, whereupon she goes
with him and a passionate love-scene ensues. Her attack begins with
the representation of this scene by writhing movements of the body
(accompanied by movements of the lips and folding of the arms to
signify kisses and embraces), whereupon she hurries into the next
room, sits down on a chair, lifts her skirt in order to show her foot,
acts as though she were about to read a book, and speaks to me
(answers me). Cf. the observation of Artemidorus: "In interpreting
dream-stories, one must consider them the first time from the
beginning to the end, and the second time from the end to the
beginning."
-
In many cases, indeed, we discover the meaning of the dream only
when we have subjected the dream-content to a multiple inversion, in
accordance with the different relations. For example, in the dream
of a young patient who is suffering from obsessional neurosis, the
memory of the childish death-wish directed against a dreaded father
concealed itself behind the following words: His father scolds him
because he comes home so late, but the context of the
psycho-analytic treatment and the impressions of the dreamer show that
the sentence must be read as follows: He is angry with his father, and
further, that his father always came home too early (i.e., too
soon). He would have preferred that his father should not come home at
all, which is identical with the wish
up and down of the head in the water at once recalled to the patient
the sensation of quickening which she had experienced in her only
pregnancy. Thinking of the boy going into the water induced a
reverie in which she saw herself taking him out of the water, carrying
him into the nursery, washing and dressing him, and installing him
in her household.
"The second half of the dream, therefore, represents thoughts
concerning the elopement, which belonged to the first half of the
underlying latent content; the first half of the dream corresponded
with the second half of the latent content, the birth phantasy.
Besides this inversion in the order, further inversions took place
in each half of the dream. In the first half the child entered the
water, and then his head bobbed; in the underlying dream-thoughts
the quickening occurred first, and then the child left the water (a
double inversion). In the second half her husband left her; in the
dream-thoughts she left her husband."
Another parturition dream is related by Abraham- the dream of a
young woman expecting her first confinement: Front one point of the
floor of the room a subterranean channel leads directly into the water
(path of parturition- amniotic fluid). She lifts up a trap in the
floor, and there immediately appears a creature dressed in brownish
fur, which almost resembles a seal. This creature changes into the
dreamer's younger brother, to whom her relation has always been
material in character.
Rank has shown from a number of dreams that parturition-dreams
employ the same symbols as micturition-dreams. The erotic stimulus
expresses itself in these dreams as in urethral stimulus. The
stratification of meaning in these dreams corresponds with a chance in
the significance of the symbol since childhood.
We may here turn back to the interrupted theme
of critical judgment and his arbitrary technique would make even the
unprejudiced observer feel doubtful.
10. From an essay by V. Tausk ("Kleider und Farben in Dienste der
Traumdarstellung," in Interna. Zeitschr. fur Ps. A., ii [1914]):
(a) A dreams that he sees his former governess wearing a dress of
black lustre, which fits closely over her buttocks. That means he
declares this woman to be lustful.
(b) C in a dream sees a girl on the road to X bathed in a white
light and wearing a white blouse.
The dreamer began an affair with a Miss White on this road.
11. In an analysis which I carried out in the French language I
had to interpret a dream in which I appeared as an elephant. I
naturally had to ask why I was thus represented: "Vous me trompez,"
answered the dreamer (Trompe = trunk).
The dream-work often succeeds in representing very refractory
material, such as proper names, by means of the forced exploitation of
very remote relations. In one of my dreams old Brucke has set me a
task. I make a preparation, and pick something out of it which looks
like crumpled tinfoil. (I shall return to this dream later.) The
corresponding association, which is not easy to find, is stanniol, and
now I know that I have in mind the name of the author Stannius,
which appeared on the title-page of a treatise on the nervous system
of fishes, which in my youth I regarded with reverence. The first
scientific problem which my teacher set me did actually relate to
the nervous system of a fish- the Ammocoetes. Obviously, this name
could not be utilized in the picture-puzzle.
Here I must not fail to include a dream with a curious content,
which is worth noting also as the dream of a child, and which is
readily explained by analysis: A lady tells me: "I can remember that
when I was a child I repeatedly dreamed that God wore a conical
paper hat on His head. They often used to make me wear such a hat at
table, so that I shouldn't be able to look at the plates of the
other children and see how much they had received of any particular
dish. Since I had heard that God was omniscient, the dream signified
that I knew everything in spite of the hat which I was made to wear."
What the dream-work consists in, and its unceremonious handling of
its material, the dream-thoughts, may be shown in an instructive
manner by the numbers and calculations which occur in dreams.
Superstition, by the way, regards numbers as having a special
significance in dreams. I shall therefore give a few examples of
this kind from my collection.
1. From the dream of a lady, shortly before the end of her
treatment:
She wants to pay for something or other; her daughter takes 3
florins 65 kreuzer from her purse; but the mother says: "What are
you doing? It costs only 21 kreuzer." This fragment of the dream was
intelligible without further explanation owing to my knowledge of
the dreamer's circumstances. The lady was a foreigner, who had
placed her daughter at school in Vienna, and was able to continue my
treatment as long as her daughter remained in the city. In three weeks
the daughter's scholastic year would end, and the treatment would then
stop. On the day before the dream the principal of the school had
asked her whether she could not decide to leave the child at school
for another year. She had then obviously reflected that in this case
she would be able to continue the treatment for another year. Now,
this is what the dream refers to, for a year is equal to 365 days; the
three weeks remaining before the end of the scholastic year, and of
the treatment, are equivalent to 21 days (though not to so many
hours of treatment). The numerals, which in the dream-thoughts refer
to periods of time, are given money values in the dream, and
simultaneously a deeper meaning finds expression- for time is money.
365 kreuzer, of course, are 3 florins 65 kreuzer. The smallness of the
sums which appear in the dream is a self-evident wish-fulfilment;
the wish has reduced both the cost of the treatment and the year's
school fees.
2. In another dream the numerals are involved in even more complex
relations. A young lady, who has been married for some years, learns
that an acquaintance of hers, of about the same age, Elise L, has just
become engaged. Thereupon she dreams: She is sitting in the theatre
with her husband and one side of the stalls is quite empty. Her
husband tells her that Elise L and her fiance had also wished to
come to the theatre, but that they only could have obtained poor
seats; three for 1 florin 50 kreuzer, and of course they could not
take those. She thinks they didn't lose much, either.
What is the origin of the 1 florin 50 kreuzer? A really
indifferent incident of the previous day. The dreamer's
sister-in-law had received 150 florins as a present from her
husband, and hastened to get rid of them by buying some jewellery. Let
us note that 150 florins is 100 times 1 florin 50 kreuzer. But
whence the 3 in connection with the seats in the theatre? There is
only one association for this, namely, that the fiance is three months
younger than herself. When we have ascertained the significance of the
fact that one side of the stalls is empty we have the solution of
the dream. This feature is an undisguised allusion to a little
incident which had given her husband a good excuse for teasing her.
She had decided to go to the theatre that week; she had been careful
to obtain tickets a few days beforehand, and had had to pay the
advance booking-fee. When they got to the theatre they found that
one side of the house was almost empty; so that she certainly need not
have been in such a hurry.
I shall now substitute the dream-thoughts for the dream: "It
surely was nonsense to marry so early; there was no need for my
being in such a hurry. From Elise L's example I see that I should have
got a husband just the same- and one a hundred times better- If I
had only waited (antithesis to the haste of her sister-in-law), I
could have bought three such men for the money (the dowry)!"- Our
attention is drawn to the fact that the numerals in this dream have
changed their meanings and their relations to a much greater extent
than in the. one previously considered. The transforming and
distorting activity of the dream has in this case been greater- a fact
which we interpret as meaning that these dream-thoughts had to
overcome an unusual degree of endo-psychic resistance before they
attained to representation. And we must not overlook the fact that the
dream contains an absurd element, namely, that two persons are
expected to take three seats. It will throw some light on the question
of the interpretation of absurdity in dreams if I remark that this
absurd detail of the dream-content is intended to represent the most
strongly emphasized of the dream-thoughts: "It was nonsense to marry
so early." The figure 3, which occurs in a quite subordinate
relation between the two persons compared (three months' difference in
their ages), has thus been adroitly utilized to produce the idea of
nonsense required by the dream. The reduction of the actual 150
florins to 1 florin 50 kreuzer corresponds to the dreamer's
disparagement of her husband in her suppressed thoughts.
3. Another example displays the arithmetical powers of dreams, which
have brought them into such disrepute. A man dreams: He is sitting
in the B's house (the B's are a family with which he was formerly
acquainted), and he says: "It was nonsense that you didn't give me Amy
for my wife." Thereupon, he asks the girl: "How old are you?"
Answer: "I was born in 1882." "Ah, then you are 28 years old."
Since the dream was dreamed in the year 1898, this is obviously
bad arithmetic, and the inability of the dreamer to calculate may,
if it cannot be otherwise explained, be likened to that of a general
paralytic. My patient was one of those men who cannot help thinking
about every woman they see. The patient who for some months came
next after him in my consulting-room was a young lady; he met this
lady after he had constantly asked about her, and he was very
anxious to make a good impression on her. This was the lady whose
age he estimated at 28. So much for explaining the result of his
apparent calculation. But 1882 was the year in which he had married.
He had been unable to refrain from entering into conversation with the
two other women whom he met at my house- the two by no means
youthful maids who alternately opened the door to him- and as he did
not find them very responsive, he had told himself that they
probably regarded him as elderly and serious.
Bearing in mind these examples, and others of a similar nature (to
follow), we may say: The dream-work does not calculate at all, whether
correctly or incorrectly; it only strings together, in the form of a
sum, numerals which occur in the dream-thoughts, and which may serve
as allusions to material which is insusceptible of representation.
It thus deals with figures, as material for expressing its intentions,
just as it deals with all other concepts, and with names and
speeches which are only verbal images.
For the dream-work cannot compose a new speech. No matter how many
speeches; and answers, which may in themselves be sensible or
absurd, may occur in dreams, analysis shows us that the dream has
taken from the dream-thoughts fragments of speeches which have
really been delivered or heard, and has dealt with them in the most
arbitrary fashion. It has not only torn them from their context and
mutilated them, accepting one fragment and rejecting another, but it
has often fitted them together in a novel manner, so that the speech
which seems coherent in a dream is dissolved by analysis into three or
four components. In this new application of the words the dream has
often ignored the meaning which they had in the dream-thoughts, and
has drawn an entirely new meaning from them. * Upon closer inspection,
the more distinct and compact ingredients of the dream-speech may be
distinguished from others, which serve as connectives, and have
probably been supplied, just as we supply omitted letters and
syllables in reading. The dream-speech thus has the structure of
breccia, in which the larger pieces of various material are held
together by a solidified cohesive medium.
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* Analyses of other numerical dreams have been given by Jung,
Marcinowski and others. Such dreams often involve very complicated
arithmetical operations, which are none the less solved by the dreamer
with astonishing confidence. Cf. also Ernest Jones, "Uber unbewusste
Zahlenbehandlung," Zentralb. fur Psychoanalyse, 4, ii, [1912], p.
241).
Neurosis behaves in the same fashion. I know a patient who-
involuntarily and unwillingly- hears (hallucinates) songs or fragments
of songs without being able to understand their significance for her
psychic life. She is certainly not a paranoiac. Analysis shows that by
exercising a certain license she gave the text of these songs a
false application. "Oh, thou blissful one! Oh, thou happy one!" This
is the first line of Christmas carol, but by not continuing it to
the word, Christmastide, she turns it into a bridal song, etc. The
same mechanism of distortion may operate, without hallucination,
merely in association.
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Strictly speaking, of course, this description is correct only for
those dream-speeches which have something of the sensory character
of a speech, and are described as speeches. The others, which have
not, as it were, been perceived as heard or spoken (which have no
accompanying acoustic or motor emphasis in the dream) are simply
thoughts, such as occur in our waking life, and find their way
unchanged into many of our dreams. Our reading, too, seems to
provide an abundant and not easily traceable source for the
indifferent speech-material of dreams. But anything that is at all
conspicuous as a speech in a dream can be referred to actual
speeches which have been made or heard by the dreamer.
We have already found examples of the derivation of such
dream-speeches in the analyses of dreams which have been cited for
other purposes. Thus, in the innocent market-dream (chapter V., A.)
where the speech: That is no longer to be had serves to identify me
with the butcher, while a fragment of the other speech: I don't know
that, I don't take that, precisely fulfils the task of rendering the
dream innocent. On the previous day, the dreamer, replying to some
unreasonable demand on the part of her cook, had waved her aside
with the words: I don't know that, behave yourself properly, and she
afterwards took into the dream the first, indifferent-sounding part of
the speech in order to allude to the latter part, which fitted well
into the phantasy underlying the dream, but which might also have
betrayed it.
Here is one of many examples which all lead to the same conclusion:
A large courtyard in which dead bodies are being burned. The dreamer
says, "I'm going, I can't stand the sight of it." (Not a distinct
speech.) Then he meets two butcher boys and asks, "Well, did it
taste good?" And one of them answers, "No, it wasn't good." As
though it had been human flesh.
The innocent occasion of this dream is as follows: After taking
supper with his wife, the dreamer pays a visit to his worthy but by no
means appetizing neighbour. The hospitable old lady is just sitting
down to her own supper, and presses him (among men a composite,
sexually significant word is used jocosely in the place of this
word) to taste it. He declines, saying that he has no appetite. She
replies: "Go on with you, you can manage it all right," or something
of the kind. The dreamer is thus forced to taste and praise what is
offered him. "But that's good!" When he is alone again with his
wife, he complains of his neighbour's importunity, and of the
quality of the food which he has tasted. "I can't stand the sight of
it," a phrase that in the dream, too, does not emerge as an actual
speech, is a thought relating to the physical charms of the lady who
invites him, which may be translated by the statement that he has no
desire to look at her.
The analysis of another dream- which I will cite at this stage for
the sake of a very distinct speech, which constitutes its nucleus, but
which will be explained only when we come to evaluate the affects in
dreams- is more instructive. I dream very vividly: I have gone to
Brucke's laboratory at night, and on hearing a gentle knocking at
the door, I open it to (the deceased) Professor Fleischl, who enters
in the company of several strangers, and after saying a few words sits
down at his table. Then follows a second dream: My friend Fl has
come to Vienna, unobtrusively, in July; I meet him in the street, in
conversation with my (deceased) friend P, and I go with them
somewhere, and they sit down facing each other as though at a small
table, while I sit facing them at the narrow end of the table. Fl
speaks of his sister, and says: "In three-quarters of an hour she
was dead," and then something like "That is the threshold." As P
does not understand him, Fl turns to me, and asks me how much I have
told P of his affairs. At this, overcome by strange emotions, I try to
tell Fl that P (cannot possibly know anything, of course, because
he) is not alive. But noticing the mistake myself, I say: "Non vixit."
Then I look searchingly at P, and under my gaze he becomes pale and
blurred, and his eyes turn a sickly blue- and at last he dissolves.
I rejoice greatly at this; I now understand that Ernst Fleischl,
too, is only an apparition, a revenant, and I find that it is quite
possible that such a person should exist only so long as one wishes
him to, and that he can be made to disappear by the wish of another
person.
This very pretty dream unites so many of the enigmatical
characteristics of the dream-content- the criticism made in the
dream itself, inasmuch as I myself notice my mistake in saying Non
vixit instead of Non vivit, the unconstrained intercourse with
deceased persons, whom the dream itself declares to be dead, the
absurdity of my conclusion, and the intense satisfaction which it
gives me- that "I would give my life" to expound the complete solution
of the problem. But in reality I am incapable of doing what I do in
the dream, i.e., of sacrificing such intimate friends to my
ambition. And if I attempted to disguise the facts, the true meaning
of the dream, with which I am perfectly familiar, would be spoiled.
I must therefore be content to select a few of the elements of the
dream for interpretation, some here, and some at a later stage.
The scene in which I annihilate P with a glance forms the centre
of the dream. His eyes become strange and weirdly blue, and then he
dissolves. This scene is an unmistakable imitation of a scene that was
actually experienced. I was a demonstrator at the Physiological
Institute; I was on duty in the morning, and Brucke learned that on
several occasions I had been unpunctual in my attendance at the
students' laboratory. One morning, therefore, he arrived at the hour
of opening, and waited for me. What he said to me was brief and to the
point; but it was not what he said that mattered. What overwhelmed
me was the terrible gaze of his blue eyes, before which I melted away-
as P does in the dream, for P has exchanged roles with me, much to
my relief. Anyone who remembers the eyes of the great master, which
were wonderfully beautiful even in his old age, and has ever seen
him angered, will readily imagine the emotions of the young
transgressor on that occasion.
But for a long while I was unable to account for the Non vixit
with which I pass sentence in the dream. Finally, I remembered that
the reason why these two words were so distinct in the dream was not
because they were heard or spoken, but because they were seen. Then
I knew at once where they came from. On the pedestal of the statue
of the Emperor joseph in the Vienna Hofburg are inscribed the
following beautiful words:
-
Saluti patriae vixit
non diu sed totus. *
-
* The inscription in fact reads:
Saluti publicae vixit
non diu sed totus.
[He lived for the safety of the public, not for a long time, but
always.] The motive of the mistake: patriae [fatherland] for publicae,
has probably been correctly divined by Wittels.
-
From this inscription I had taken what fitted one inimical train
of thought in my dream-thoughts, and which was intended to mean: "That
fellow has nothing to say in the matter, he is not really alive."
And I now recalled that the dream was dreamed a few days after the
unveiling of the memorial to Fleischl, in the cloisters of the
University, upon which occasion I had once more seen the memorial to
Brucke, and must have thought with regret (in the unconscious) how
my gifted friend P, with all his devotion to science, had by his
premature death forfeited his just claim to a memorial in these halls.
So I set up this memorial to him in the dream; Josef is my friend
P's baptismal name. *
-
* As an example of over-determination: My excuse for coming late was
that after working late into the night, in the morning I had to make
the long journey from Kaiser-Josef-Strasse to Wahringer Strasse.
-
According to the rules of dream-interpretation, I should still not
be justified in replacing non vivit, which I need, by non vixit, which
is placed at my disposal by the recollection of the Kaiser Josef
memorial. Some other element of the dream-thoughts must have
contributed to make this possible. Something now calls my attention to
the fact that in the dream scene two trains of thought relating to
my friend P meet, one hostile, the other affectionate- the former on
the surface, the latter covered up- and both are given
representation in the same words: non vixit. As my friend P has
deserved well of science, I erect a memorial to him; as he has been
guilty of a malicious wish (expressed at the end of the dream), I
annihilate him. I have here constructed a sentence with a special
cadence, and in doing so I must have been influenced by some
existing model. But where can I find a similar antithesis, a similar
parallel between two opposite reactions to the same person, both of
which can claim to be wholly justified, and which nevertheless do
not attempt to affect one another? Only in one passage which, however,
makes a profound impression upon the reader- Brutus's speech of
justification in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "As Caesar loved me, I
weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant.
I honour him; but as he was ambitious, I slew him." Have we not here
the same verbal structure, and the same antithesis of thought, as in
the dream-thoughts? So I am playing Brutus in my dream. If only I
could find in my dream-thoughts another collateral connection to
confirm this! I think it might be the following: My friend Fl comes to
Vienna in July. This detail is not the case in reality. To my
knowledge, my friend has never been in Vienna in July. But the month
of July is named after Julius Caesar, and might therefore very well
furnish the required allusion to the intermediate thought- that I am
playing the part of Brutus. *
-
* And also, Caesar = Kaiser.
-
Strangely enough, I once did actually play the part of Brutus.
When I was a boy of fourteen, I presented the scene between Brutus and
Caesar in Schiller's poem to an audience of children: with the
assistance of my nephew, who was a year older than I, and who had come
to us from England- and was thus a revenant- for in him I recognized
the playmate of my early childhood. Until the end of my third year
we had been inseparable; we had loved each other and fought each other
and, as I have already hinted, this childish relation has determined
all my later feelings in my intercourse with persons of my own age. My
nephew John has since then had many incarnations, which have
revivified first one and then another aspect of a character that is
ineradicably fixed in my unconscious memory. At times he must have
treated me very badly, and I must have opposed my tyrant courageously,
for in later years I was often told of a short speech in which I
defended myself when my father- his grandfather- called me to account:
"Why did you hit John?" "I hit him because he hit me." It must be this
childish scene which causes non vivit to become non vixit, for in
the language of later childhood striking is known as wichsen
(German: wichsen = to polish, to wax, i.e., to thrash); and the
dream-work does not disdain to take advantage of such associations. My
hostility towards my friend P, which has so little foundation in
reality- he was greatly my superior, and might therefore have been a
new edition of my old playmate- may certainly be traced to my
complicated relations with John during our childhood. I shall, as I
have said, return to this dream later on.
G. Absurd Dreams- Intellectual Performances in Dreams
-
I.
-
Hitherto, in our interpretation of dreams, we have come upon the
element of absurdity in the dream-content so frequently that we must
no longer postpone the investigation of its cause and its meaning.
We remember, of course, that the absurdity of dreams has furnished the
opponents of dream-interpretation with their chief argument for
regarding the dream as merely the meaningless product of an attenuated
and fragmentary activity of the psyche.
I will begin with a few examples in which the absurdity of the
dream-content is apparent only, disappearing when the dream is more
thoroughly examined. These are certain dreams which- accidently, one
begins by thinking- are concerned with the dreamer's dead father.
1. Here is the dream of a patient who had lost his father six
years before the date of the dream:
His father had been involved in a terrible accident. He was
travelling by the night express when the train was derailed, the seats
were telescoped, and his head was crushed from side to side. The
dreamer sees him lying on his bed; from his left eyebrow a wound
runs vertically upwards. The dreamer is surprised that his father
should have met with an accident (since he is dead already, as the
dreamer adds in relating his dream). His father's eyes are so clear.
According to the prevailing standards of dream-criticism, this
dream-content would be explained as follows: At first, while the
dreamer is picturing his father's accident, he has forgotten that
his father has already been many years in his grave; in the course
of the dream this memory awakens, so that he is surprised at his own
dream even while he is dreaming it. Analysis, however, tells us that
it is quite superfluous to seek for such explanations. The dreamer had
commissioned a sculptor to make a bust of his father, and he had
inspected the bust two days before the dream. It is this which seems
to him to have come to grief (the German word means gone wrong or
met with an accident). The sculptor has never seen his father, and has
had to work from photographs. On the very day before the dream the son
had sent an old family servant to the studio in order to see whether
he, too, would pass the some judgment upon the marble bust- namely,
that it was too narrow between the temples. And now follows the
memory-material which has contributed to the formation of the dream:
The dreamer's father had a habit, whenever he was harassed by business
cares or domestic difficulties, of pressing his temples between his
hands, as though his head was growing too large and be was trying to
compress it. When the dreamer was four years old, he was present
when a pistol was accidentally discharged, and his father's eyes
were blackened (his eyes are so clear). When his father was thoughtful
or depressed, he had a deep furrow in his forehead just where the
dream shows his wound. The fact that in the dream this wrinkle is
replaced by a wound points to the second occasion for the dream. The
dreamer had taken a photograph of his little daughter; the plate had
fallen from his hand, and when he picked it up it revealed a crack
which ran like a vertical furrow across the child's forehead,
extending as far as the eyebrow. He could not help feeling a
superstitious foreboding, for on the day before his mother's death the
negative of her portrait had been cracked.
Thus, the absurdity of this dream is simply the result of a
carelessness of verbal expression, which does not distinguish
between the bust or the photograph and the original. We are all
accustomed to making remarks like: "Don't you think it's exactly
your father?" The appearance of absurdity in this dream might, of
course, have been easily avoided. If it were permissible to form an
opinion on the strength of a single case, one might be tempted to
say that this semblance of absurdity is admitted or even desired.
-
II.
-
Here is another example of the same kind from my own dreams (I
lost my father in the year 1896):
After his death, my father has played a part in the political life
of the Magyars, and has united them into a political whole; and here I
see, indistinctly, a little picture: a number of men, as though in the
Reichstag; a man is standing on one or two chairs; there are others
round about him. I remember that on his deathbed he looked so like
Garibaldi, and I am glad that this promise has really come true.
Certainly this is absurd enough. It was dreamed at the time when the
Hungarians were in a state of anarchy, owing to Parliamentary
obstruction, and were passing through the crisis from which Koloman
Szell subsequently delivered them. The trivial circumstance that the
scenes beheld in dreams consist of such little pictures is not without
significance for the elucidation of this element. The customary visual
dream-representations of our thoughts present images that impress us
as being life-size; my dream-picture, however, is the reproduction
of a wood-cut inserted in the text of an illustrated history of
Austria, representing Maria Theresa in the Reichstag of Pressburg- the
famous scene of Moriamur pro rege nostro. * Like Maria Theresa, my
father, in my dream, is surrounded by the multitude; but he is
standing on one or two chairs (Stuhlen), and is thus, like a
Stuhlrichter (presiding judge). (He has united them; here the
intermediary is the phrase: "We shall need no judge.") Those of us who
stood about my father's death-bed did actually notice that he looked
very like Garibaldi. He had a post-mortem rise of temperature; his
cheeks shone redder and redder... involuntarily we continue: "And
behind him, in unsubstantial (radiance), lay that which subdues us
all- the common fate."
-
* [We die for our king.] I have forgotten in what author I found a
reference to a dream which was overrun with unusually small figures,
the source of which proved to be one of the engravings of Jacques
Callot, which the dreamer had examined during the day. These
engravings contain an enormous number of very small figures; a whole
series of them deals with the horrors of the Thirty Years War.
-
This uplifting of our thoughts prepares us for the fact that we
shall have to deal with this common fate. The post-mortem rise in
temperature corresponds to the words after his death in the
dream-content. The most agonizing of his afflictions had been a
complete paralysis of the intestines (obstruction) during the last few
weeks of his life. All sorts of disrespectful thoughts associate
themselves with this. One of my contemporaries, who lost his father
while still at the Gymnasium- upon which occasion I was profoundly
moved, and tendered him my friendship- once told me, derisively, of
the distress of a relative whose father had died in the street, and
had been brought home, when it appeared, upon undressing the corpse,
that at the moment of death, or post-mortem, an evacuation of the
bowels (Stuhlentleerung) had taken place. The daughter was deeply
distressed by this circumstance, because this ugly detail would
inevitably spoil her memory of her father. We have now penetrated to
the wish that is embodied in this dream. To stand after one's death
before one's children great and undefiled: who would not wish that?
What now has become of the absurdity of this dream? The appearance
of absurdity was due only to the fact that a perfectly permissible
figure of speech, in which we are accustomed to ignore any absurdity
that may exist as between its components, has been faithfully
represented in the dream. Here again we can hardly deny that the
appearance of absurdity is desired and has been purposely produced.
The frequency with which dead persons appear in our dreams as living
and active and associating with us has evoked undue astonishment,
and some curious explanations, which afford conspicuous proof of our
misunderstanding of dreams. And yet the explanation of these dreams is
close at hand. How often it happens that we say to ourselves: "If my
father were still alive, what would he say to this?" The dream can
express this if in no other way than by his presence in a definite
situation. Thus, for instance, a young man whose grandfather has
left him a great inheritance dreams that the old man is alive, and
calls his grandson to account, reproaching him for his lavish
expenditure. What we regard as an objection to the dream on account of
our better knowledge that the man is already dead, is in reality the
consoling thought that the dead man does not need to learn the
truth, or satisfaction over the fact that he can no longer have a
say in the matter.
Another form of absurdity found in dreams of deceased relatives does
not express scorn and derision; it serves to express the extremest
repudiation, the representation of a suppressed thought which one
would like to believe the very last thing one would think of. Dreams
of this kind appear to be capable of solution only if we remember that
a dream makes no distinction between desire and reality. For
example, a man who nursed his father during his last illness, and
who felt his death very keenly, dreamed some time afterwards the
following senseless dream: His father was again living, and conversing
with him as usual, but (and this was the remarkable thing) he had
nevertheless died, though he did not know it. This dream is
intelligible if, after he had nevertheless died, we insert in
consequence of the dreamer's wish, and if after but he did not know
it, we add that the dreamer had entertained this wish. While nursing
him, the son had often wished that his father was dead; that is, he
had had the really compassionate thought that it would be a good thing
if death would at last put an end to his sufferings. While he was
mourning his father's death, even this compassionate wish became an
unconscious reproach, as though it had really contributed to shorten
the sick man's life. By the awakening of the earliest infantile
feelings against his father, it became possible to express this
reproach as a dream; and it was precisely because of the extreme
antithesis between the dream-instigator and the day-thoughts that this
dream had to assume so absurd a form. *
-
* Cf. "Formulations regarding the Two Principles in Mental
Functioning," Collected Papers, IV.
-
As a general thing, the dreams of a deceased person of whom the
dreamer has been fond confront the interpreter with difficult
problems, the solution of which is not always satisfying. The reason
for this may be sought in the especially pronounced ambivalence of
feeling which controls the relation of the dreamer to the dead person.
In such dreams it is quite usual for the deceased person to be treated
at first as living; then it suddenly appears that he is dead; and in
the continuation of the dream he is once more living. This has a
confusing effect. I at last divined that this alternation of death and
life is intended to represent the indifference of the dreamer ("It
is all one to me whether he is alive or dead"). This indifference,
of course, is not real, but wished; its purpose is to help the dreamer
to deny his very intense and often contradictory emotional
attitudes, and so it becomes the dream-representation of his
ambivalence. For other dreams in which one meets with deceased persons
the following rule will often be a guide: If in the dream the
dreamer is not reminded that the dead person is dead, he sets
himself on a par with the dead; he dreams of his own death. The sudden
realization or astonishment in the dream ("but he has long been
dead!") is a protest against this identification, and rejects the
meaning that the dreamer is dead. But I will admit that I feel that
dream-interpretation is far from having elicited all the secrets of
dreams having this content.
-
III.
-
In the example which I shall now cite, I can detect the dream-work
in the act of purposely manufacturing an absurdity for which there
is no occasion whatever in the dream-material. It is taken from the
dream which I had as a result of meeting Count Thun just before
going away on a holiday. I am driving in a cab, and I tell the
driver to drive to a railway station. "Of course, I can't drive with
you on the railway track itself," I say, after the driver had
reproached me, as though I had worn him out; at the same time, it
seems as though I had already made with him a journey that one usually
makes by train. Of this confused and senseless story analysis gives
the following explanation: During the day I had hired a cab to take me
to a remote street in Dornbach. The driver, however, did not know
the way, and simply kept on driving, in the manner of such worthy
people, until I became aware of the fact and showed him the way,
indulging in a few derisive remarks. From this driver a train of
thought led to the aristocratic personage whom I was to meet later on.
For the present, I will only remark that one thing that strikes us
middle-class plebeians about the aristocracy is that they like to
put themselves in the driver's seat. Does not Count Thun guide the
Austrian car of State? The next sentence in the dream, however, refers
to my brother, whom I thus also identify with the cab-driver. I had
refused to go to Italy with him this year (Of course, I can't drive
with you on the railway track itself), and this refusal was a sort
of punishment for his accustomed complaint that I usually wear him out
on this tour (this finds its way into the dream unchanged) by
rushing him too quickly from place to place, and making him see too
many beautiful things in a single day. That evening my brother had
accompanied me to the railway station, but shortly before the carriage
had reached the Western station of the Metropolitan Railway he had
jumped out in order to take the train to Purkersdorf. I suggested to
him that he might remain with me a little longer, as he did not travel
to Purkersdorf by the Metropolitan but by the Western Railway. This is
why, in my dream, I made in the cab a journey which one usually
makes by train. In reality, however, it was the other way about:
what I told my brother was: "The distance which you travel on the
Metropolitan Railway you could travel in my company on the Western
Railway" The whole confusion of the dream is therefore due to the fact
that in my dream I replace "Metropolitan Railway" by cab, which, to be
sure, does good service in bringing the driver and my brother into
conjunction. I then elicit from the dream some nonsense which is
hardly disentangled by elucidation, and which almost constitutes a
contradiction of my earlier speech (of course, I cannot drive with you
on the railway track itself). But as I have no excuse whatever for
confronting the Metropolitan Railway with the cab, I must
intentionally have given the whole enigmatical story this peculiar
form in my dream.
But with what intention? We shall now learn what the absurdity in
the dream signifies, and the motives which admitted it or created
it. In this case the solution of the mystery is as follows: In the
dream I need an absurdity, and something incomprehensible, in
connection with driving (Fahren = riding, driving) because in the
dream-thoughts I have a certain opinion that demands representation.
One evening, at the house of the witty and hospitable lady who
appears, in another scene of the same dream, as the housekeeper, I
heard two riddles which I could not solve: As they were known to the
other members of the party, I presented a somewhat ludicrous figure in
my unsuccessful attempts to find the solutions. They were two puns
turning on the words Nachkommen (to obey orders- offspring) and
Vorfahren (to drive- forefathers, ancestry). They ran, I believe, as
follows:
-
The coachman does it
At the master's behests;
Everyone has it;
In the grave it rests.
(Vorfahren)
-
A confusing detail was that the first halves of the two riddles were
identical:
-
The coachman does it
At the master's behests;
Not everyone has it,
In the cradle it rests.
(Nachkommen)
-
When I saw Count Thun drive up (vorfahren) in state, and fell into
the Figaro-like mood, in which one finds that the sole merit of such
aristocratic gentlemen is that they have taken the trouble to be
born (to become Nachkommen), these two riddles became intermediary
thoughts for the dream-work. As aristocrats may readily be replaced by
coachmen, and since it was once the custom to call a coachman Herr
Schwager (brother-in-law), the work of condensation could involve my
brother in the same representation. But the dream-thought at work in
the background is as follows: It is nonsense to be proud of one's
ancestors (Vorfahren). I would rather be an ancestor (Vorfahr) myself.
On account of this opinion, it is nonsense, we have the nonsense in
the dream. And now the last riddle in this obscure passage of the
dream is solved- namely that I have driven before (vorher gefahren,
vorgefaltren) with this driver.
Thus, a dream is made absurd if there occurs in the
dream-thoughts, as one of the elements of the contents, the opinion:
"That is nonsense"; and, in general, if criticism and derision are the
motives of one of the dreamer's unconscious trains of thought.
Hence, absurdity is one of the means by which the dream-work
represents contradiction; another means is the inversion of material
relation between the dream-thoughts and the dream-content; another
is the employment of the feeling of motor inhibition. But the
absurdity of a dream is not to be translated by a simple no; it is
intended to reproduce the tendency of the dream-thoughts to express
laughter or derision simultaneously with the contradiction. Only
with this intention does the dream-work produce anything ridiculous.
Here again it transforms a part of the latent content into a
manifest form. *
-
* Here the dream-work parodies the thought which it qualifies as
ridiculous, in that it creates something ridiculous in relation to it.
Heine does the same thing when he wishes to deride the bad rhymes of
the King of Bavaria. He does it by using even worse rhymes:
Herr Ludwig ist ein grosser Poet
Und singt er, so sturzt Apollo
Vor ihm auf die Knie und bittet und fleht,
Halt ein, ich werde sonst toll, oh!
-
As a matter of fact, we have already cited a convincing example of
this significance of an absurd dream. The dream (interpreted without
analysis) of the Wagnerian performance which lasted until 7.45 a.m.,
and in which the orchestra is conducted from a tower, etc.
before I went to bed. And, strangely enough, here is another proof
that I am the superman! The platform of Notre-Dame was my favourite
nook in Paris; every free afternoon I used to go up into the towers of
the cathedral and there clamber about between the monsters and
gargoyles. The circumstance that all the excrement vanishes so rapidly
before the stream of urine corresponds to the motto: Afflavit et
dissipati sunt, which I shall some day make the title of a chapter
on the therapeutics of hysteria.
And now as to the affective occasion of the dream. It had been a hot
summer afternoon; in the evening, I had given my lecture on the
connection between hysteria and the perversions, and everything
which I had to say displeased me thoroughly, and seemed utterly
valueless. I was tired; I took not the least pleasure in my
difficult work, and longed to get away from this rummaging in human
filth; first to see my children, and then to revisit the beauties of
Italy. In this mood I went from the lecture-hall to a cafe to get some
little refreshment in the open air, for my appetite had forsaken me.
But a member of my audience went with me; he begged for permission
to sit with me while I drank my coffee and gulped down my roll, and
began to say flattering things to me. He told me how much he had
learned from me, that he now saw everything through different eyes,
that I had cleansed the Augean stables of error and prejudice, which
encumbered the theory of the neuroses- in short, that I was a very
great man. My mood was ill-suited to his hymn of praise; I struggled
with my disgust, and went home earlier in order to get rid of him; and
before I went to sleep I turned over the leaves of Rabelais, and
read a short story by C. F. Meyer entitled Die Leiden eines Knaben
(The Sorrows of a Boy).
The dream had originated from this material, and Meyer's novel had
supplied the recollections of scenes of childhood. * The day's mood of
annoyance and disgust is continued in the dream, inasmuch as it is
permitted to furnish nearly all the material for the dream-content.
But during the night the opposite mood of vigorous, even immoderate
self-assertion awakened and dissipated the earlier mood. The dream had
to assume such a form as would accommodate both the expressions of
self-depreciation and exaggerated self-glorification in the same
material. This compromise-formation resulted in an ambiguous
dream-content, but, owing to the mutual inhibition of the opposites,
in an indifferent emotional tone.
-
* Cf. the dream about Count Thun, last scene.
-
According to the theory of wish-fulfilment, this dream would not
have been possible had not the opposed, and indeed suppressed, yet
pleasure-emphasized megalomanic train of thought been added to the
thoughts of disgust. For nothing painful is intended to be represented
in dreams; the painful elements of our daily thoughts are able to
force their way into our dreams only if at the same time they are able
to disguise a wish-fulfilment.
The dream-work is able to dispose of the affects of the
dream-thoughts in yet another way than by admitting them or reducing
them to zero. It can transform them into their opposites. We are
acquainted with the rule that for the purposes of interpretation every
element of the dream may represent its opposite, as well as itself.
One can never tell beforehand which is to be posited; only the context
can decide this point. A suspicion of this state of affairs has
evidently found its way into the popular consciousness; the
dream-books, in their interpretations, often proceed according to
the principle of contraries. This transformation into the contrary
is made possible by the intimate associative ties which in our
thoughts connect the idea of a thing with that of its opposite. Like
every other displacement, this serves the purposes of the
censorship, but it is often the work of wish-fulfilment, for
wish-fulfilment consists in nothing more than the substitution of an
unwelcome thing by its opposite. Just as concrete images may be
transformed into their contraries in our dreams, so also may the
affects of the dream-thoughts, and it is probable that this
inversion of affects is usually brought about by the dream-censorship.
The suppression and inversion of affects is useful even in social
life, as is shown by the familiar analogy of the dream-censorship and,
above all, hypocrisy. If I am conversing with a person to whom I
must show consideration while I should like to address him as an
enemy, it is almost more important that I should conceal the
expression of my affect from him than that I should modify the
verbal expression of my thoughts. If I address him in courteous terms,
but accompany them by looks or gestures of hatred and disdain, the
effect which I produce upon him is not very different from what it
would have been had I cast my unmitigated contempt into his face.
Above all, then, the censorship bids me suppress my affects. and if
I am a master of the art of dissimulation I can hypocritically display
the opposite affect- smiling where I should like to be angry, and
pretending affection where I should like to destroy.
We have already had an excellent example of such an inversion of
affect in the service of the dream-censorship. In the dream of my
uncle's beard I feel great affection for my friend R, while (and
because) the dream-thoughts berate him as a simpleton. From this
example of the inversion of affects we derived our first proof of
the existence of the censorship. Even here it is not necessary to
assume that the dream-work creates a counter-affect of this kind
that is altogether new; it usually finds it lying ready in the
material of the dream-thoughts, and merely intensifies it with the
psychic force of the defence-motives until it is able to predominate
in the dream-formation. In the dream of my uncle, the affectionate
counter-affect probably has its origin in an infantile source (as
the continuation of the dream would suggest), for owing to the
peculiar nature of my earliest childhood experiences the relation of
uncle and nephew has become the source of all my friendships and
hatreds (cf. analysis chapter VI., F.).
An excellent example of such a reversal of affect is found in a
dream recorded by Ferenczi. * "An elderly gentleman was awakened at
night by his wife, who was frightened because he laughed so loudly and
uncontrollably in his sleep. The man afterwards related that he had
had the following dream: I lay in my bed, a gentleman known to me came
in, I wanted to turn on the light, but I could not; I attempted to
do so repeatedly, but in vain. Thereupon my wife got out of bed, in
order to help me, but she, too, was unable to manage it; being ashamed
of her neglige in the presence of the gentleman, she finally gave it
up and went back to her bed; all this was so comical that I had to
laugh terribly. My wife said: 'What are you laughing at, what are
you laughing at?' but I continued to laugh until I woke. The following
day the man was extremely depressed, and suffered from headache: 'From
too much laughter, which shook me up,' he thought.
-
* Internat. Zeitschr. f. Psychoanalyse, IV (1916).
-
"Analytically considered, the dream looks less comical. In the
latent dream-thoughts the gentleman known to him who came into the
room is the image of death as the 'great unknown,' which was
awakened in his mind on the previous day. The old gentleman, who
suffers from arteriosclerosis, had good reason to think of death on
the day before the dream. The uncontrollable laughter takes the
place of weeping and sobbing at the idea that he has to die. It is the
light of life that he is no longer able to turn on. This mournful
thought may have associated itself with a failure to effect sexual
intercourse, which he had attempted shortly before this, and in
which the assistance of his wife en neglige was of no avail; he
realized that he was already on the decline. The dream-work knew how
to transform the sad idea of impotence and death into a comic scene,
and the sobbing into laughter."
There is one class of dreams which has a special claim to be
called hypocritical, and which severely tests the theory of
wish-fulfilment. My attention was called to them when Frau Dr. M.
Hilferding proposed for discussion by the Psychoanalytic Society of
Vienna a dream recorded by Rosegger, which is here reprinted:
In Waldheimat, vol. xi, Rosegger writes as follows in his story,
Fremd gemacht (p. 303):
"I usually enjoy healthful sleep, yet I have gone without repose
on many a night; in addition to my modest existence as a student and
literary man, I have for long years dragged out the shadow of a
veritable tailor's life- like a ghost from which I could not become
divorced.
"It is not true that I have occupied myself very often or very
intensely with thoughts of my past during the day. A stormer of heaven
and earth who has escaped from the hide of the Philistine has other
things to think about. And as a gay young fellow, I hardly gave a
thought to my nocturnal dreams; only later, when I had formed the
habit of thinking about everything, or when the Philistine within me
began to assert itself a little, did it strike me that- when I dreamed
at all- I was always a journeyman tailor, and that in that capacity
I had already worked in my master's shop for a long time without any
pay. As I sat there beside him, and sewed and pressed, I was perfectly
well aware that I no longer belonged there, and that as a burgess of
the town I had other things to attend to; but I was always on a
holiday, or away in the country, and so I sat beside my master and
helped him. I often felt far from comfortable about it, and
regretted the waste of time which I might have employed for better and
more useful purposes. If anything was not quite correct in measure and
cut I had to put up with a scolding from my master. Of wages there was
never a question. Often, as I sat with bent back in the dark workshop,
I decided to give notice and make myself scarce. Once I actually did
so, but the master took no notice of me, and next time I was sitting
beside him again and sewing.
"How happy I was when I woke up after such weary hours! And I then
resolved that, if this intrusive dream should ever occur again, I
would energetically throw it off, and would cry aloud: 'It is only a
delusion, I am lying in bed, and I want to sleep'... And the next
night I would be sitting in the tailor's shop again.
"So it went on for years, with dismal regularity. Once when the
master and I were working at Alpelhofer's, at the house of the peasant
with whom I began my apprenticeship, it happened that my master was
particularly dissatisfied with my work. 'I should like to know where
in the world your thoughts are?' he cried, and looked at me
sullenly. I thought the most sensible thing to do would be to get up
and explain to the master that I was working with him only as a
favour, and then take my leave. But I did not do this. I even
submitted when the master engaged an apprentice, and ordered me to
make room for him on the bench. I moved into the corner, and kept on
sewing. On the same day another journeyman was engaged; a bigoted
fellow; he was the Bohemian who had worked for us nineteen years
earlier, and then had fallen into the lake on his way home from the
public-house. When he tried to sit down there was no room for him. I
looked at the master inquiringly, and he said to me: 'You have no
talent for tailoring; you may go; you're a stranger henceforth.' My
fright on that occasion was so overpowering that I woke.
"The grey of morning glimmered through the clear windows of my
familiar home. Objets d'art surrounded me; in the tasteful bookcase
stood the eternal Homer, the gigantic Dante, the incomparable
Shakespeare, the glorious Goethe- all radiant and immortal. From the
adjoining room resounded the clear little voices of the children,
who were waking up and prattling to their mother. I felt as though I
had rediscovered that idyllically sweet, peaceful, poetical and
spiritualized life in which I have so often and so deeply been
conscious of contemplative human happiness. And yet I was vexed that I
had not given my master notice first, but had been dismissed by him.
"And how remarkable this seems to me: since that night, when my
master 'made a stranger' of me, I have enjoyed restful sleep; I no
longer dream of my tailoring days, which now lie in the remote past:
which in their unpretentious simplicity were really so cheerful, but
which, none the less, have cast a long shadow over the later years
of my life."
In this series of dreams of a poet who, in his younger years, had
been a journeyman tailor, it is hard to recognize the domination of
the wish-fulfilment. All the delightful things occurred in his
waking life, while the dream seemed to drag along with it the
ghost-like shadow of an unhappy existence which had long been
forgotten. Dreams of my own of a similar character enable me to give
some explanation of such dreams. As a young doctor, I worked for a
long time in the Chemical Institute without being able to accomplish
anything in that exacting science, so that in the waking state I never
think about this unfruitful and actually somewhat humiliating period
of my student days. On the other hand, I have a recurring dream to the
effect that I am working in the laboratory, making analyses, and
experiments, and so forth; these dreams, like the
examination-dreams, are disagreeable, and they are never very
distinct. During the analysis of one of these dreams my attention
was directed to the word analysis, which gave me the key to an
understanding of them. Since then I have become an analyst. I make
analyses which are greatly praised- psycho-analyses, of course. Now
I understand: when I feel proud of these analyses in my waking life,
and feel inclined to boast of my achievements, my dreams hold up to me
at night those other, unsuccessful analyses, of which I have no reason
to be proud; they are the punitive dreams of the upstart, like those
of the journeyman tailor who became a celebrated poet. But how is it
possible for a dream to place itself at the service of
self-criticism in its conflict with parvenu pride, and to take as
its content a rational warning instead of a prohibited
wish-fulfilment? I have already hinted that the answer to this
question presents many difficulties. We may conclude that the
foundation of the dream consisted at first of an arrogant phantasy
of ambition; but that in its stead only its suppression and
abasement has reached the dream-content. One must remember that
there are masochistic tendencies in mental life to which such an
inversion might be attributed. I see no objection to regarding such
dreams as punishment-dreams, as distinguished from wish-fulfilling
dreams. I should not see in this any limitation of the theory of
dreams hitherto as presented, but merely a verbal concession to the
point of view to which the convergence of contraries seems strange.
But a more thorough investigation of individual dreams of this class
allows us to recognize yet another element. In an indistinct,
subordinate portion of one of my laboratory dreams, I was just at
the age which placed me in the most gloomy and most unsuccessful
year of my professional career; I still had no position, and no idea
how I was going to support myself, when I suddenly found that I had
the choice of several women whom I might marry! I was, therefore,
young again and, what is more, she was young again- the woman who
has shared with me all these difficult years. In this way, one of
the wishes which constantly gnaws at the heart of the aging man was
revealed as the unconscious dream-instigator. The conflict raging in
other psychic strata between vanity and self-criticism had certainly
determined the dream-content, but the more deeply-rooted wish for
youth had alone made it possible as a dream. One often says to oneself
even in the waking state: "To be sure, things are going well with
you today, and once you found life very hard; but, after all, life was
sweet in those days, when you were still so young." *
-
* Ever since psycho-analysis has dissected the personality into an
ego and a super-ego (Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego,
p. 664 below), it has been easy to recognize in these
punishment-dreams wishfulfilments of the super-ego.
-
Another group of dreams, which I have often myself experienced,
and which I have recognized to be hypocritical, have as their
content a reconciliation with persons with whom one has long ceased to
have friendly relations. The analysis constantly discovers an occasion
which might well induce me to cast aside the last remnants of
consideration for these former friends, and to treat them as strangers
or enemies. But the dream chooses to depict the contrary relation.
In considering dreams recorded by a novelist or poet, we may often
enough assume that he has excluded from the record those details which
he felt to be disturbing and regarded as unessential. His dreams
thus set us a problem which could be readily solved if we had an exact
reproduction of the dream-content.
O. Rank has called my attention to the fact that in Grimm's
fairy-tale of the valiant little tailor, or Seven at One Stroke, there
is related a very similar dream of an upstart. The tailor, who has
become a hero, and has married the king's daughter, dreams one night
while lying beside the princess, his wife, about his trade; having
become suspicious, on the following night she places armed guards
where they can listen to what is said by the dreamer, and arrest
him. But the little tailor is warned, and is able to correct his
dream.
The complicated processes of removal, diminution, and inversion by
which the affects of the dream-thoughts finally become the affects
of the dream may be very well survived in suitable syntheses of
completely analysed dreams. I shall here discuss a few examples of
affective manifestations in dreams which will, I think, prove this
conclusively in some of the cases cited.
-
V.
-
In the dream about the odd task which the elder Brucke sets me- that
of preparing my own pelvis- I am aware in the dream itself of not
feeling appropriate horror. Now this is a wish-fulfilment in more
senses than one. The preparation signifies the self-analyses which I
perform, as it were, by publishing my book on dreams, which I actually
found so painful that I postponed the printing of the completed
manuscript for more than a year. The wish now arises that I may
disregard this feeling of aversion, and for that reason I feel no
horror (Grauen, which also means to grow grey) in the dream. I
should much like to escape Grauen in the other sense too, for I am
already growing quite grey, and the grey in my hair warns me to
delay no longer. For we know that at the end of the dream this thought
secures representation: "I shall have to leave my children to reach
the goal of their difficult journey without my help."
In the two dreams that transfer the expression of satisfaction to
the moments immediately after waking, this satisfaction is in the
one case motivated by the expectation that I am now going to learn
what is meant by I have already dreamed of this, and refers in reality
to the birth of my first child, and in the other case it is
motivated by the conviction that "that which has been announced by a
premonitory sign" is now going to happen, and the satisfaction is that
which I felt on the arrival of my second son. Here the same affects
that dominated in the dream-thoughts have remained in the dream, but
the process is probably not quite so simple as this in any dream. If
the two analyses are examined a little more closely it will be seen
that this satisfaction, which does not succumb to the censorship,
receives reinforcement from a source which must fear the censorship,
and whose affect would certainly have aroused opposition if it had not
screened itself by a similar and readily admitted affect of
satisfaction from the permitted source, and had, so to speak,
sneaked in behind it. I am unfortunately unable to show this in the
case of the actual dream, but an example from another situation will
make my meaning intelligible. I will put the following case: Let there
be a person near me whom I hate so strongly that I have a lively
impulse to rejoice should anything happen to him. But the moral side
of my nature does not give way to this impulse; I do not dare to
express this sinister wish, and when something does happen to him
which he does not deserve I suppress my satisfaction, and force myself
to thoughts and expressions of regret. Everyone will at some time have
found himself in such a position. But now let it happen that the hated
person, through some transgression of his own, draws upon himself a
well-deserved calamity; I shall now be allowed to give free rein to my
satisfaction at his being visited by a just punishment, and I shall be
expressing an opinion which coincides with that of other impartial
persons. But I observe that my satisfaction proves to be more
intense than that of others, for it has received reinforcement from
another source- from my hatred, which was hitherto prevented by the
inner censorship from furnishing the affect, but which, under the
altered circumstances, is no longer prevented from doing so. This case
generally occurs in social life when antipathetic persons or the
adherents of an unpopular minority have been guilty of some offence.
Their punishment is then usually commensurate not with their guilt,
but with their guilt plus the ill-will against them that has
hitherto not been put into effect. Those who punish them doubtless
commit an injustice, but they are prevented from becoming aware of
it by the satisfaction arising from the release within themselves of a
suppression of long standing. In such cases the quality of the
affect is justified, but not its degree; and the self-criticism that
has been appeased in respect of the first point is only too ready to
neglect to scrutinize the second point. Once you have opened the
doors, more people enter than it was your original intention to admit.
A striking feature of the neurotic character, namely, that in it
causes capable of evoking affect produce results which are
qualitatively justified but quantitatively excessive, is to be
explained on these lines, in so far as it admits of a psychological
explanation at all. But the excess of affect proceeds from unconscious
and hitherto suppressed affective sources which are able to
establish an associative connection with the actual occasion, and
for whose liberation of affect the unprotested and permitted source of
affects opens up the desired path. Our attention is thus called to the
fact that the relation of mutual inhibition must not be regarded as
the only relation obtaining between the suppressed and the suppressing
psychic institution. The cases in which the two institutions bring
about a pathological result by co-operation and mutual reinforcement
deserve just as much attention. These hints regarding the psychic
mechanism will contribute to our understanding of the expressions of
affects in dreams. A gratification which makes its appearance in a
dream, and which, of course, may readily be found in its proper
place in the dream-thoughts, may not always be fully explained by
means of this reference. As a rule, it is necessary to search for a
second source in the dream-thoughts, upon which the pressure of the
censorship rests, and which, under this pressure, would have yielded
not gratification but the contrary affect, had it not been enabled
by the presence of the first dream-source to free its
gratification-affect from repression, and reinforce the
gratification springing from the other source. Hence affects which
appear in dreams appear to be formed by the confluence of several
tributaries, and are over-determined in respect of the material of the
dream-thoughts. Sources of affect which are able to furnish the same
affect combine in the dream-work in order to produce it. *
-
* I have since explained the extraordinary effect of pleasure
produced by tendency wit on analogous lines.
-
Some insight into these involved relations is gained from the
analysis of the admirable dream in which Non vixit constitutes the
central point (cf. chapter VI., F). In this dream expressions of
affect of different qualities are concentrated at two points in the
manifest content. Hostile and painful impulses (in the dream itself we
have the phrase overcome by strange emotions) overlap one another at
the point where I destroy my antagonistic friend with a couple of
words. At the end of the dream I am greatly pleased, and am quite
ready to believe in a possibility which I recognize as absurd when I
am awake, namely, that there are revenants who can be swept away by
a mere wish.
I have not yet mentioned the occasion of this dream. It is an
important one, and leads us far down into the meaning of the dream.
From my friend in Berlin (whom I have designated as Fl) I had received
the news that he was about to undergo an operation, and that relatives
of his living in Vienna would inform me as to his condition. The first
few messages after the operation were not very reassuring, and
caused me great anxiety. I should have liked to go to him myself,
but at that time I was afflicted with a painful complaint which made
every movement a torment. I now learn from the dream-thoughts that I
feared for this dear friend's life. I knew that his only sister,
with whom I had never been acquainted, had died young, after a very
brief illness. (In the dream Fl tells me about his sister, and says:
"In three-quarters of an hour she was dead.") I must have imagined
that his own constitution was not much stronger, and that I should
soon be travelling, in spite of my health, in response to far worse
news- and that I should arrive too late, for which I should
eternally reproach myself. * This reproach, that I should arrive too
late, has become the central point of the dream, but it has been
represented in a scene in which the revered teacher of my student
years- Brucke- reproaches me for the same thing with a terrible look
from his blue eyes. What brought about this alteration of the scene
will soon become apparent: the dream cannot reproduce the scene itself
as I experienced it. To be sure, it leaves the blue eyes to the
other man, but it gives me the part of the annihilator, an inversion
which is obviously the work of the wish-fulfilment. My concern for the
life of my friend, my self-reproach for not having gone to him, my
shame (he had come to me in Vienna unobtrusively), my desire to
consider myself excused on account of my illness- all this builds up
an emotional tempest which is distinctly felt in my sleep, and which
rages in that region of the dream-thoughts.
-
* It is this fancy from the unconscious dream-thoughts which
peremptorily demands non vivit instead of non vixit. "You have come
too late, he is no longer alive." The fact that the manifest situation
of the dream aims at the non vivit has been mentioned in chapter
VI., G.
-
But there was another thing in the occasion of the dream which had
quite the opposite effect. With the unfavourable news during the first
days of the operation I received also an injunction to speak to no one
about the whole affair, which hurt my feelings, for it betrayed an
unnecessary distrust of my discretion. I knew, of course, that this
request did not proceed from my friend, but that it was due to
clumsiness or excessive timidity on the part of the messenger; yet the
concealed reproach affected me very disagreeably, because it was not
altogether unjustified. As we know, only reproaches which have
something in them have the power to hurt. Years ago, when I was
younger than I am now, I knew two men who were friends, and who
honoured me with their friendship; and I quite superfluously told
one of them what the other had said of him. This incident, of
course, had nothing to do with the affairs of my friend Fl, but I have
never forgotten the reproaches to which I had to listen on that
occasion. One of the two friends between whom I made trouble was
Professor Fleischl; the other one I will call by his baptismal name,
Josef, a name which was borne also by my friend and antagonist P,
who appears in this dream.
In the dream the element unobtrusively points to the reproach that I
cannot keep anything to myself, and so does the question of Fl as to
how much of his affairs I have told P. But it is the intervention of
that old memory which transposes the reproach for arriving too late
from the present to the time when I was working in Brucke's
laboratory; and by replacing the second person in the annihilation
scene of the dream by a Josef, I enable this scene to represent not
only the first reproach- that I have arrived too late- but also that
other reproach, more strongly affected by the repression, to the
effect that I do not keep secrets. The work of condensation and
displacement in this dream, as well as the motives for it, are now
obvious.
My present trivial annoyance at the injunction not to divulge
secrets draws reinforcement from springs that flow far beneath the
surface, and so swells to a stream of hostile impulses towards persons
who are in reality dear to me. The source which furnishes the
reinforcement is to be found in my childhood. I have already said that
my warm friendships as well as my enmities with persons of my own
age go back to my childish relations to my nephew, who was a year
older than I. In these he had the upper hand, and I early learned
how to defend myself; we lived together, were inseparable, and loved
one another, but at times, as the statements of older persons testify,
we used to squabble and accuse one another. In a certain sense, all my
friends are incarnations of this first figure; they are all revenants.
My nephew himself returned when a young man, and then we were like
Caesar and Brutus. An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always
been indispensable to my emotional life; I have always been able to
create them anew, and not infrequently my childish ideal has been so
closely approached that friend and enemy have coincided in the same
person; but not simultaneously, of course, nor in constant
alternation, as was the case in my early childhood.
How, when such associations exist, a recent occasion of emotion
may cast back to the infantile occasion and substitute this as a cause
of affect, I shall not consider now. Such an investigation would
properly belong to the psychology of unconscious thought, or a
psychological explanation of the neuroses. Let us assume, for the
purposes of dream-interpretation, that a childish recollection
presents itself, or is created by the phantasy with, more or less, the
following content: We two children quarrel on account of some
object- just what we shall leave undecided, although the memory, or
illusion of memory, has a very definite object in view- and each
claims that he got there first, and therefore has the first right to
it. We come to blows; Might comes before Right; and, according to
the indications of the dream, I must have known that I was in the
wrong (noticing the error myself); but this time I am the stronger,
and take possession of the battlefield; the defeated combatant hurries
to my father, his grandfather, and accuses me, and I defend myself
with the words, which I have heard from my father: "I hit him
because he hit me." Thus, this recollection, or more probably
phantasy, which forces itself upon my attention in the course of the
analysis- without further evidence I myself do not know how- becomes a
central item of the dream-thoughts, which collects the affective
impulses prevailing in the dream-thoughts, as the bowl of a fountain
collects the water that flows into it. From this point the
dream-thoughts flow along the following channels: "It serves you right
that you have had to make way for me; why did you try to push me
off? I don't need you; I'll soon find someone else to play with," etc.
Then the channels are opened through which these thoughts flow back
again into the dream-representation. For such an "ote-toi que je m'y
mette," * I once had to reproach my deceased friend Josef. He was next
to me in the line of promotion in Brucke's laboratory, but advancement
there was very slow. Neither of the two assistants budged from his
place, and youth became impatient. My friend, who knew that his days
were numbered, and was bound by no intimate relation to his
superior, sometimes gave free expression to his impatience. As this
superior was a man seriously ill, the wish to see him removed by
promotion was susceptible of an obnoxious secondary interpretation.
Several years earlier, to be sure, I myself had cherished, even more
intensely, the same wish- to obtain a post which had fallen vacant;
wherever there are gradations of rank and promotion the way is
opened for the suppression of covetous wishes. Shakespeare's Prince
Hal cannot rid himself of the temptation to see how the crown fits,
even at the bedside of his sick father. But, as may readily be
understood, the dream inflicts this inconsiderate wish not upon me,
but upon my friend. *(2)
-
* Make room for me.
*(2) It will have been obvious that the name Josef plays a great
part in my dreams
no reason to avoid this problem- namely, how one can arrive at a
pre-existent aim by following an arbitrarily and aimlessly
maundering chain of thoughts- since we shall be able not to solve
the problem, it is true, but to get rid of it entirely.
For it is demonstrably incorrect to state that we abandon
ourselves to an aimless excursion of thought when, as in the
interpretation of dreams, we renounce reflection and allow the
involuntary ideas to come to the surface. It can be shown that we
are able to reject only those directing ideas which are known to us,
and that with the cessation of these the unknown- or, as we
inexactly say, unconscious- directing ideas immediately exert their
influence, and henceforth determine the flow of the involuntary ideas.
Thinking without directing ideas cannot be ensured by any influence we
ourselves exert on our own psychic life; neither do I know of any
state of psychic derangement in which such a mode of thought
establishes itself. * The psychiatrists have here far too
prematurely relinquished the idea of the solidity of the psychic
structure. I know that an unregulated stream of thoughts, devoid of
directing ideas, can occur as little in the realm of hysteria and
paranoia as in the formation or solution of dreams. Perhaps it does
not occur at all in the endogenous psychic affections, and,
according to the ingenious hypothesis of Lauret, even the deliria
observed in confused psychic states have meaning and are
incomprehensible to us only because of omissions. I have had the
same conviction whenever I have had an opportunity of observing such
states. The deliria are the work of a censorship which no longer makes
any effort to conceal its sway, which, instead of lending its
support to a revision that is no longer obnoxious to it, cancels
regardlessly anything to which it objects, thus causing the remnant to
appear disconnected. This censorship proceeds like the Russian
censorship on the frontier, which allows only those foreign journals
which have had certain passages blacked out to fall into the bands
of the readers to be protected.
-
* Only recently has my attention been called to the fact that Ed.
von Hartmann took the same view with regard to this psychologically
important point: Incidental to the discussion of the role of the
unconscious in artistic creation (Philos. d. Unbew., Vol. i, Sect. B.,
Chap. V) Eduard von Hartmann clearly enunciated the law of association
of ideas which is directed by unconscious directing ideas, without
however realizing the scope of this law. With him it was a question of
demonstrating that "every combination of a sensuous idea when it is
not left entirely to chance, but is directed to a definite end, is
in need of help from the unconscious," and that the conscious interest
in any particular thought-association is a stimulus for the
unconscious to discover from among the numberless possible ideas the
one which corresponds to the directing idea. "It is the unconscious
that selects, and appropriately, in accordance with the aims of the
interest: and this holds true for the associations in abstract
thinking (as sensible representations and artistic combinations as
well as for flashes of wit)." Hence, a limiting of the association
of ideas to ideas that evoke and are evoked in the sense of pure
association-psychology is untenable. Such a restriction "would be
justified only if there were states in human life in which man was
free not only from any conscious purpose, but also from the domination
or cooperation of any unconscious interest, any passing mood. But such
a state hardly ever comes to pass, for even if one leaves one's
train of thought seemingly altogether to chance, or if one
surrenders oneself entirely to the involuntary dreams of phantasy, yet
always other leading interests, dominant feelings and moods prevail at
one time rather than another, and these will always exert an influence
on the association of ideas." (Philos. d. Unbew., IIe, Aufl. i.
246). In semi-conscious dreams there always appear only such ideas
as correspond to the (unconscious) momentary main interest. By
rendering prominent the feelings and moods over the free
thought-series, the methodical procedure of psycho-analysis is
thoroughly justified even from the standpoint of Hartmann's Psychology
(N. E. Pohorilles, Internat. Zeitschrift. f. Ps. A., I, [1913], p.
605). Du Prel concludes from the fact that a name which we vainly
try to recall suddenly occurs to the mind that there is an unconscious
but none the less purposeful thinking, whose result then appears in
consciousness (Philos. d. Mystik, p. 107).
-
The free play of ideas following any chain of associations may
perhaps occur in cases of destructive organic affections of the brain.
What, however, is taken to be such in the psychoneuroses may always be
explained as the influence of the censorship on a series of thoughts
which have been pushed into the foreground by the concealed
directing ideas. * It has been considered an unmistakable sign of free
association unencumbered by directing ideas if the emerging ideas
(or images) appear to be connected by means of the so-called
superficial associations- that is, by assonance, verbal ambiguity, and
temporal coincidence, without inner relationship of meaning; in
other words, if they are connected by all those associations which
we allow ourselves to exploit in wit and playing upon words. This
distinguishing mark holds good with associations which lead us from
the elements of the dream-content to the intermediary thoughts, and
from these to the dream-thoughts proper; in many analyses of dreams we
have found surprising examples of this. In these no connection was too
loose and no witticism too objectionable to serve as a bridge from one
thought to another. But the correct understanding of such surprising
tolerance is not far to seek. Whenever one psychic element is
connected with another by an obnoxious and superficial association,
there exists also a correct and more profound connection between the
two, which succumbs to the resistance of the censorship.
-
* Jung has brilliantly corroborated this statement by analyses of
dementia praecox. (Cf. The Psychology of Dementia Praecox,
translated by A. A. Brill. Monograph Series, [Journal of Nervous and
Mental Diseases Publishing Co., New York].)
-
The correct explanation for the predominance of the superficial
associations is the pressure of the censorship, and not the
suppression of the directing ideas. Whenever the censorship renders
the normal connective paths impassable, the superficial associations
will replace the deeper ones in the representation. It is as though in
a mountainous region a general interruption of traffic, for example an
inundation, should render the broad highways impassable: traffic would
then have to be maintained by steep and inconvenient tracks used at
other times only by the hunter.
We can here distinguish two cases which, however, are essentially
one. In the first case, the censorship is directed only against the
connection of two thoughts which, being detached from one another,
escape its opposition. The two thoughts then enter successively into
consciousness; their connection remains concealed; but in its place
there occurs to us a superficial connection between the two which
would not otherwise have occurred to us, and which as a rule
connects with another angle of the conceptual complex instead of
that from which the suppressed but essential connection proceeds.
Or, in the second case, both thoughts, owing to their content, succumb
to the censorship; both then appear not in their correct form but in a
modified, substituted form; and both substituted thoughts are so
selected as to represent, by a superficial association, the
essential relation which existed between those that they have
replaced. Under the pressure of the censorship, the displacement of
a normal and vital association by one superficial and apparently
absurd has thus occurred in both cases.
Because we know of these displacements, we unhesitatingly rely
upon even the superficial associations which occur in the course of
dream-interpretation. *
-
* The same considerations naturally hold good of the case in which
superficial associations are exposed in the dream-content, as, for
example, in both the dreams reported by Maury (p. 50, pelerinage-
pelletier- pelle, kilometer- kilograms- gilolo, Lobelia- Lopez-
Lotto). I know from my work with neurotics what kind of reminiscence
is prone to represent itself in this manner. It is the consultation of
encyclopedias by which most people have satisfied their need of an
explanation of the sexual mystery when obsessed by the curiosity of
puberty.
-
The psycho-analysis of neurotics makes abundant use of the two
principles: that with the abandonment of the conscious directing ideas
the control over the flow of ideas is transferred to the concealed
directing ideas; and that superficial associations are only a
displacement-substitute for suppressed and more profound ones. Indeed,
psycho-analysis makes these two principles the foundation-stones of
its technique. When I request a patient to dismiss all reflection, and
to report to me whatever comes into his mind, I firmly cling to the
assumption that he will not be able to drop the directing idea of
the treatment, and I feel justified in concluding that what he
reports, even though it may seem to be quite ingenuous and
arbitrary, has some connection with his morbid state. Another
directing idea of which the patient has no suspicion is my own
personality. The full appreciation, as well as the detailed proof of
both these explanations, belongs to the description of the
psycho-analytic technique as a therapeutic method. We have here
reached one of the junctions, so to speak, at which we purposely
drop the subject of dream-interpretation. *
-
* The above statements, which when written sounded very
improbable, have since been corroborated and applied experimentally by
Jung and his pupils in the Diagnostiche Assoziationsstudien.
-
Of all the objections raised, only one is justified and still
remains to be met; namely, that we ought not to ascribe all the
associations of the interpretation-work to the nocturnal dream-work.
By interpretation in the waking state we are actually opening a path
running back from the dream-elements to the dream-thoughts. The
dream-work has followed the contrary direction, and it is not at all
probable that these paths are equally passable in opposite directions.
On the contrary, it appears that during the day, by means of new
thought-connections, we sink shafts that strike the intermediary
thoughts and the dream-thoughts now in this place, now in that. We can
see how the recent thought-material of the day forces its way into the
interpretation-series, and how the additional resistance which has
appeared since the night probably compels it to make new and further
detours. But the number and form of the collaterals which we thus
contrive during the day are, psychologically speaking, indifferent, so
long as they point the way to the dream-thoughts which we are seeking.
B. Regression
-
Now that we have defended ourselves against the objections raised,
or have at least indicated our weapons of defence, we must no longer
delay entering upon the psychological investigations for which we have
so long been preparing. Let us summarize the main results of our
recent investigations: The dream is a psychic act full of import;
its motive power is invariably a wish craving fulfilment; the fact
that it is unrecognizable as a wish, and its many peculiarities and
absurdities, are due to the influence of the psychic censorship to
which it has been subjected during its formation. Besides the
necessity of evading the censorship, the following factors have played
a part in its formation: first, a need for condensing the psychic
material; second, regard for representability in sensory images; and
third (though not constantly), regard for a rational and
intelligible exterior of the dream-structure. From each of these
propositions a path leads onward to psychological postulates and
assumptions. Thus, the reciprocal relation of the wish-motives, and
the four conditions. as well as the mutual relations of these
conditions, must now be investigated; the dream must be inserted in
the context of the psychic life.
At the beginning of this section we cited a certain dream in order
that it might remind us of the problems that are still unsolved. The
interpretation of this dream (of the burning child) presented no
difficulties, although in the analytical sense it was not given in
full. We asked ourselves why, after all, it was necessary that the
father should dream instead of waking, and we recognized the wish to
represent the child as living as a motive of the dream. That there was
yet another wish operative in the dream we shall be able to show after
further discussion. For the present, however, we may say that for
the sake of the wish-fulfilment the thought-process of sleep was
transformed into a dream.
If the wish-fulfilment is cancelled out, only one characteristic
remains which distinguishes the two kinds of psychic events. The
dream-thought would have been: "I see a glimmer coming from the room
in which the body is lying. Perhaps a candle has fallen over, and
the child is burning!" The dream reproduces the result of this
reflection unchanged, but represents it in a situation which exists in
the present and is perceptible by the senses like an experience of the
waking state. This, however, is the most common and the most
striking psychological characteristic of the dream; a thought, usually
the one wished for, is objectified in the dream, and represented as
a scene, or- as we think- experienced.
But how are we now to explain this characteristic peculiarity of the
dream-work, or- to put it more modestly- how are we to bring it into
relation with the psychic processes?
On closer examination, it is plainly evident that the manifest
form of the dream is marked by two characteristics which are almost
independent of each other. One is its representation as a present
situation with the omission of perhaps; the other is the translation
of the thought into visual images and speech.
The transformation to which the dream-thoughts are subjected because
the expectation is put into the present tense is, perhaps, in this
particular dream not so very striking. This is probably due to the
special and really subsidiary role of the wish-fulfilment in this
dream. Let us take another dream, in which the dream-wish does not
break away from the continuation of the waking thoughts in sleep;
for example, the dream of Irma's injection. Here the dream-thought
achieving representation is in the conditional: "If only Otto could be
blamed for Irma's illness!" The dream suppresses the conditional,
and replaces it by a simple present tense: "Yes, Otto is to blame
for Irma's illness." This, then, is the first of the transformations
which even the undistorted dream imposes on the dream-thoughts. But we
will not linger over this first peculiarity of the dream. We dispose
of it by a reference to the conscious phantasy, the day-dream, which
behaves in a similar fashion with its conceptual content. When
Daudet's M. Joyeuse wanders unemployed through the streets of Paris
while his daughter is led to believe that he has a post and is sitting
in his office, he dreams, in the present tense, of circumstances
that might help him to obtain a recommendation and employment. The
dream, then, employs the present tense in the same manner and with the
same right as the day-dream. The present is the tense in which the
wish is represented as fulfilled.
The second quality peculiar to the dream alone, as distinguished
from the day-dream, is that the conceptual content is not thought, but
is transformed into visual images, to which we give credence, and
which we believe that we experience. Let us add. however, that not all
dreams show this transformation of ideas into visual images. There are
dreams which consist solely of thoughts, but we cannot on that account
deny that they are substantially dreams. My dream Autodidasker- the
day-phantasy about Professor N is of this character; it is almost as
free of visual elements as though I had thought its content during the
day. Moreover, every long dream contains elements which have not
undergone this transformation into the visual, and which are simply
thought or known as we are wont to think or know in our waking
state. And we must here reflect that this transformation of ideas into
visual images does not occur in dreams alone, but also in
hallucinations and visions, which may appear spontaneously in
health, or as symptoms in the psychoneuroses. In brief, the relation
which we are here investigating is by no means an exclusive one; the
fact remains, however, that this characteristic of the dream, whenever
it occurs, seems to be its most noteworthy characteristic, so that
we cannot think of the dream-life without it. To understand it,
however, requires a very exhaustive discussion.
Among all the observations relating to the theory of dreams to be
found in the literature of the subject, I should like to lay stress
upon one as being particularly worthy of mention. The famous G. T.
H. Fechner makes the conjecture, * in a discussion as to the nature of
the dreams, that the dream is staged elsewhere than in the waking
ideation. No other assumption enables us to comprehend the special
peculiarities of the dream-life.
-
* Psychophysik, Part. II, p. 520.
-
The idea which is thus put before us is one of psychic locality.
We shall wholly ignore the fact that the psychic apparatus concerned
is known to us also as an anatomical preparation, and we shall
carefully avoid the temptation to determine the psychic locality in
any anatomical sense. We shall remain on psychological ground, and
we shall do no more than accept the invitation to think of the
instrument which serves the psychic activities much as we think of a
compound microscope, a photographic camera, or other apparatus. The
psychic locality, then, corresponds to a place within such an
apparatus in which one of the preliminary phases of the image comes
into existence. As is well known, there are in the microscope and
the telescope such ideal localities or planes, in which no tangible
portion of the apparatus is located. I think it superfluous to
apologize for the imperfections of this and all similar figures. These
comparisons are designed only to assist us in our attempt to make
intelligible the complication of the psychic performance by dissecting
it and referring the individual performances to the individual
components of the apparatus. So far as I am aware, no attempt has
yet been made to divine the construction of the psychic instrument
by means of such dissection. I see no harm in such an attempt; I think
that we should give free rein to our conjectures, provided we keep our
heads and do not mistake the scaffolding for the building. Since for
the first approach to any unknown subject we need the help only of
auxiliary ideas, we shall prefer the crudest and most tangible
hypothesis to all others.
Accordingly, we conceive the psychic apparatus as a compound
instrument, the component parts of which we shall call instances,
or, for the sake of clearness, systems. We shall then anticipate
that these systems may perhaps maintain a constant spatial orientation
to one another, very much as do the different and successive systems
of lenses of a telescope. Strictly speaking, there is no need to
assume an actual spatial arrangement of the psychic system. It will be
enough for our purpose if a definite sequence is established, so
that in certain psychic events the system will be traversed by the
excitation in a definite temporal order. This order may be different
in the case of other processes; such a possibility is left open. For
the sake of brevity, we shall henceforth speak of the component
parts of the apparatus as Psi-systems.
The first thing that strikes us is the fact that the apparatus
composed of Psi-systems has a direction. All our psychic activities
proceed from (inner or outer) stimuli and terminate in innervations.
We thus ascribe to the apparatus a sensory and a motor end; at the
sensory end we find a system which receives the perceptions, ind at
the motor end another which opens the sluices of motility. The psychic
process generally runs from the perceptive end to the motor end. The
most general scheme of the psychic apparatus has therefore the
following appearance as shown in Fig. 1.
this is only in compliance with the requirement, long familiar to
us, that the psychic apparatus must be constructed like a reflex
apparatus. The reflex act remains the type of every psychic activity
as well.
We now have reason to admit a first differentiation at the sensory
end. The percepts that come to us leave in our psychic apparatus a
trace, which we may call a memory-trace. The function related to
this memory-trace we call the memory. If we hold seriously to our
resolution to connect the psychic processes into systems, the
memory-trace can consist only of lasting changes in the elements of
the systems. But, as has already been shown elsewhere, obvious
difficulties arise when one and the same system is faithfully to
preserve changes in its elements and still to remain fresh and
receptive in respect of new occasions of change. In accordance with
the principle which is directing our attempt, we shall therefore
ascribe these two functions to two different systems. We assume that
an initial system of this apparatus receives the stimuli of perception
but retains nothing of them- that is, it has no memory; and that
behind this there lies a second system, which transforms the momentary
excitation of the first into lasting traces. The following would
then be the diagram of our psychic apparatus:
We know that of the percepts which act upon the P-system, we
retain permanently something else as well as the content itself. Our
percepts prove also to be connected with one another in the memory,
and this is especially so if they originally occurred
simultaneously. We call this the fact of association. It is now
clear that, if the P-system is entirely lacking in memory, it
certainly cannot preserve traces for the associations; the
individual P-elements would be intolerably hindered in their
functioning if a residue of a former connection should make its
influence felt against a new perception. Hence we must rather assume
that the memory-system is the basis of association. The fact of
association, then, consists in this- that in consequence of a
lessening of resistance and a smoothing of the ways from one of the
mem-elements, the excitation transmits itself to a second rather
than to a third mem-element.
On further investigation we find it necessary to assume not one
but many such mem-systems, in which the same excitation transmitted by
the P-elements undergoes a diversified fixation. The first of these
mem-systems will in any case contain the fixation of the association
through simultaneity, while in those lying farther away the same
material of excitation will be arranged according to other forms of
combination; so that relationships of similarity, etc., might
perhaps be represented by these later systems. It would, of course, be
idle to attempt to express in words the psychic significance of such a
system. Its characteristic would lie in the intimacy of its
relations to elements of raw material of memory- that is (if we wish
to hint at a more comprehensive theory) in the gradations of the
conductive resistance on the way to these elements.
An observation of a general nature, which may possibly point to
something of importance, may here be interpolated. The P-system, which
possesses no capacity for preserving changes, and hence no memory,
furnishes to consciousness the complexity and variety of the sensory
qualities. Our memories, on the other hand, are unconscious in
themselves; those that are most deeply impressed form no exception.
They can be made conscious, but there is no doubt that they unfold all
their activities in the unconscious state. What we term our
character is based, indeed, on the memory-traces of our impressions,
and it is precisely those impressions that have affected us most
strongly, those of our early youth, which hardly ever become
conscious. But when memories become conscious again they show no
sensory quality, or a very negligible one in comparison with the
perceptions. If, now, it can be confirmed that for consciousness
memory and quality are mutually exclusive in the Psi-systems, we
have gained a most promising insight into the determinations of the
neuron excitations. *
-
* Since writing this, I have thought that consciousness occurs
actually in the locality of the memory-trace.
-
What we have so far assumed concerning the composition of the
psychic apparatus at the sensible end has been assumed regardless of
dreams and of the psychological explanations which we have hitherto
derived from them. Dreams, however, will serve as a source of evidence
for our knowledge of another part of the apparatus. We have seen
that it was impossible to explain dream-formation unless we ventured
to assume two psychic instances, one of which subjected the activities
of the other to criticism, the result of which was exclusion from
consciousness.
We have concluded that the criticizing instance maintains closer
relations with the consciousness than the instance criticized. It
stands between the latter and the consciousness like a screen.
Further, we have found that there is reason to identify the
criticizing instance with that which directs our waking life and
determines our voluntary conscious activities. If, in accordance
with our assumptions, we now replace these instances by systems, the
criticizing system will therefore be moved to the motor end. We now
enter both systems in our diagram, expressing, by the names given
them, their relation to consciousness.
The last of the systems at the motor end we call the preconscious
(Pcs.) to denote that the exciting processes in this system can
reach consciousness without any further detention, provided certain
other conditions are fulfilled, e.g., the attainment of a definite
degree of intensity, a certain apportionment of that function which we
must call attention, etc. This is at the same time the system which
holds the keys of voluntary motility. The system behind it we call the
unconscious (Ucs), because it has no access to consciousness except
through the preconscious, in the passage through which the
excitation-process must submit to certain changes. *
-
* The further elaboration of this linear diagram will have to reckon
with the assumption that the system following the Pcs represents the
one to which we must attribute consciousness (Cs), so that P = Cs.
-
In which of these systems, then, do we localize the impetus to
dream-formation? For the sake of simplicity, let us say in the
system Ucs. We shall find, it is true, in subsequent discussions, that
this is not altogether correct; that dream-formation is obliged to
make connection with dream-thoughts which belong to the system of
the preconscious. But we shall learn elsewhere, when we come to deal
with the dream-wish, that the motive-power of the dream is furnished
by the Ucs, and on account of this factor we shall assume the
unconscious system as the starting-point for dream-formation. This
dream-excitation, like all the other thought-structures, will now
strive to continue itself in the Pcs, and thence to gain admission
to the consciousness.
Experience teaches us that the path leading through the preconscious
to consciousness is closed to the dream-thoughts during the day by the
resisting censorship. At night they gain admission to consciousness;
the question arises: In what way and because of what changes? If
this admission were rendered possible to the dream-thoughts by the
weakening, during the night, of the resistance watching on the
boundary between the unconscious and the preconscious, we should
then have dreams in the material of our ideas, which would not display
the hallucinatory character that interests us at present.
The weakening of the censorship between the two systems, Ucs and
Pcs, can explain to us only such dreams as the Autodidasker dream
but not dreams like that of the burning child, which- as will be
remembered- we stated as a problem at the outset in our present
investigations.
What takes place in the hallucinatory dream we can describe in no
other way than by saying that the excitation follows a retrogressive
course. It communicates itself not to the motor end of the
apparatus, but to the sensory end, and finally reaches the system of
perception. If we call the direction which the psychic process follows
from the unconscious into the waking state progressive, we may then
speak of the dream as having a regressive character. *
-
* The first indication of the element of regression is already
encountered in the writings of Albertus Magnus. According to him the
imaginatio constructs the dream out of the tangible objects which it
has retained. The process is the converse of that operating in the
waking state. Hobbes states (Leviathan, ch. 2): "In sum our dreams are
the reverse of our imagination, the motion, when we are awake,
beginning at one end, and when we dream at another" (quoted by
Havelock Ellis, loc. cit., p. 112).
-
This regression is therefore assuredly one of the most important
psychological peculiarities of the dream-process; but we must not
forget that it is not characteristic of the dream alone. Intentional
recollection and other component processes of our normal thinking
likewise necessitate a retrogression in the psychic apparatus from
some complex act of ideation to the raw material of the
memory-traces which underlie it. But during the waking state this
turning backwards does not reach beyond the memory-images; it is
incapable of producing the hallucinatory revival of the perceptual
images. Why is it otherwise in dreams? When we spoke of the
condensation-work of the dream we could not avoid the assumption
that by the dream-work the intensities adhering to the ideas are
completely transferred from one to another. It is probably this
modification of the usual psychic process which makes possible the
cathexis * of the system of P to its full sensory vividness in the
reverse direction to thinking.
-
* From the Greek Kathexo, to occupy, used here in place of the
author's term Besetzung, to signify a charge or investment of energy.-
TR.
-
I hope that we are not deluding ourselves as regards the
importance of this present discussion. We have done nothing more
than give a name to an inexplicable phenomenon. We call it
regression if the idea in the dream is changed back into the visual
image from which it once originated. But even this step requires
justification. Why this definition if it does not teach us anything
new? Well, I believe that the word regression is of service to us,
inasmuch as it connects a fact familiar to us with the scheme of the
psychic apparatus endowed with direction. At this point, and for the
first time, we shall profit by the fact that we have constructed
such a scheme. For with the help of this scheme we shall perceive,
without further reflection, another peculiarity of dream-formation. If
we look upon the dream as a process of regression within the
hypothetical psychic apparatus, we have at once an explanation of
the empirically proven fact that all thought-relations of the
dream-thoughts are either lost in the dream-work or have difficulty in
achieving expression. According to our scheme, these thought-relations
are contained not in the first mem-systems, but in those lying farther
to the front, and in the regression to the perceptual images they must
forfeit expression. In regression, the structure of the dream-thoughts
breaks up into its raw material.
But what change renders possible this regression which is impossible
during the day? Let us here be content with an assumption. There
must evidently be changes in the cathexis of the individual systems,
causing the latter to become more accessible or inaccessible to the
discharge of the excitation; but in any such apparatus the same effect
upon the course of the excitation might be produced by more than one
kind of change. We naturally think of the. sleeping state, and of
the many cathectic changes which this evokes at the sensory end of the
apparatus. During the day there is a continuous stream flowing from
the Psi-system of the P toward the motility end; this current ceases
at night, and can no longer block the flow of the current of
excitation in the opposite direction. This would appear to be that
seclusion from the outer world which, according to the theory of
some writers, is supposed to explain the psychological character of
the dream. In the explanation of the regression of the dream we shall,
however, have to take into account those other regressions which occur
during morbid waking states. In these other forms of regression the
explanation just given plainly leaves us in the lurch. Regression
occurs in spite of the uninterrupted sensory current in a
progressive direction.
The hallucinations of hysteria and paranoia, as well as the
visions of mentally normal persons, I would explain as
corresponding, in fact, to regressions, i.e., to thoughts
transformed into images; and would assert that only such thoughts
undergo this transformation as are in intimate connection with
suppressed memories, or with memories which have remained unconscious.
As an example, I will cite the case of one of my youngest hysterical
patients- a boy of twelve, who was prevented from falling asleep by
"green faces with red eyes," which terrified him. The source of this
manifestation was the suppressed, but once conscious memory of a boy
whom he had often seen four years earlier, and who offered a warning
example of many bad habits, including masturbation, for which he was
now reproaching himself. At that time his mother had noticed that
the complexion of this ill-mannered boy was greenish and that he had
red (i.e., red-rimmed) eyes. Hence his terrifying vision, which merely
determined his recollection of another saying of his mother's, to
the effect that such boys become demented, are unable to learn
anything at school, and are doomed to an early death. A part of this
prediction came true in the case of my little patient; he could not
get on at school, and, as appeared from his involuntary
associations, he was in terrible dread of the remainder of the
prophecy. However, after a brief period of successful treatment his
sleep was restored, his anxiety removed, and he finished his
scholastic year with an excellent record.
Here I may add the interpretation of a vision described to me by
an hysterical woman of forty, as having occurred when she was in
normal health. One morning she opened her eyes and saw her brother
in the room, although she knew him to be confined in an insane asylum.
Her little son was asleep by her side. Lest the child should be
frightened on seeing his uncle, and fall into convulsions, she
pulled the sheet over his face. This done, the phantom disappeared.
This apparition was the revision of one of her childish memories,
which, although conscious, was most intimately connected with all
the unconscious material in her mind. Her nurserymaid had told her
that her mother, who had died young (my patient was then only eighteen
months old), had suffered from epileptic or hysterical convulsions,
which dated back to a fright caused by her brother (the patient's
uncle) who appeared to her disguised as a spectre with a sheet over
his head. The vision contains the same elements as the reminiscence,
viz., the appearance of the brother, the sheet, the fright, and its
effect. These elements, however, are arranged in a fresh context,
and are transferred to other persons. The obvious motive of the
vision, and the thought which it replaced, was her solicitude lest her
little son, who bore a striking resemblance to his uncle, should share
the latter's fate.
Both examples here cited are not entirely unrelated to the state
of sleep, and may for that reason be unfitted to afford the evidence
for the sake of which I have cited them. I will, therefore, refer to
my analysis of an hallucinatory paranoic woman patient * and to the
results of my hitherto unpublished studies on the psychology of the
psychoneuroses, in order to emphasize the fact that in these cases
of regressive thought-transformation one must not overlook the
influence of a suppressed memory, or one that has remained
unconscious, this being usually of an infantile character. This memory
draws into the regression, as it were, the thoughts with which it is
connected, and which are kept from expression by the censorship-
that is, into that form of representation in which the memory itself
is psychically existent. And here I may add, as a result of my studies
of hysteria, that if one succeeds in bringing to consciousness
infantile scenes (whether they are recollections or phantasies) they
appear as hallucinations, and are divested of this character only when
they are communicated. It is known also that even in persons whose
memories are not otherwise visual, the earliest infantile memories
remain vividly visual until late in life.
-
* Selected Papers on Hysteria, "Further Observations on the
Defence-Neuro-Psychoses," p. 97 above.
-
If, now, we bear in mind the part played in the dream-thoughts by
the infantile experiences, or by the phantasies based upon them, and
recollect how often fragments of these re-emerge in the dream-content,
and how even the dream-wishes often proceed from them, we cannot
deny the probability that in dreams, too, the transformation of
thoughts into visual images may be the result of the attraction
exercised by the visually represented memory, striving for
resuscitation, upon the thoughts severed from the consciousness and
struggling for expression. Pursuing this conception. we may further
describe the dream as the substitute for the infantile scene
modified by transference to recent material. The infantile scene
cannot enforce its own revival, and must therefore be satisfied to
return as a dream.
This reference to the significance of the infantile scenes (or of
their phantastic repetitions) as in a certain degree furnishing the
pattern for the dream-content renders superfluous the assumption
made by Scherner and his pupils concerning inner sources of stimuli.
Scherner assumes a state of visual excitation, of internal
excitation in the organ of sight, when the dreams manifest a special
vividness or an extraordinary abundance of visual elements. We need
raise no objection to this assumption; we may perhaps content
ourselves with assuming such a state of excitation only for the
psychic perceptive system of the organ of vision; we shall, however,
insist that this state of excitation is a reanimation by the memory of
a former actual visual excitation. I cannot, from my own experience,
give a good example showing such an influence of an infantile
memory; my own dreams are altogether less rich in perceptual
elements than I imagine those of others to be; but in my most
beautiful and most vivid dream of late years I can easily trace the
hallucinatory distinctness of the dream-contents to the visual
qualities of recently received impressions. In chapter VI., H, I
mentioned a dream in which the dark blue of the water, the brown of
the smoke issuing from the ship's funnels, and the sombre brown and
red of the buildings which I saw made a profound and lasting
impression upon my mind. This dream, if any, must be attributed to
visual excitation, but what was it that had brought my organ of vision
into this excitable state? It was a recent impression which had joined
itself to a series of former impressions. The colours I beheld were in
the first place those of the toy blocks with which my children had
erected a magnificent building for my admiration, on the day preceding
the dream. There was the sombre red on the large blocks, the blue
and brown on the small ones. Joined to these were the colour
impressions of my last journey in Italy: the beautiful blue of the
Isonzo and the lagoons, the brown hue of the Alps. The beautiful
colours seen in the dream were but a repetition of those seen in
memory.
Let us summarize what we have learned about this peculiarity of
dreams: their power of recasting their idea-content in visual
images. We may not have explained this character of the dream-work
by referring it to the known laws of psychology, but we have singled
it out as pointing to unknown relations, and have given it the name of
the regressive character. Wherever such regression has occurred, we
have regarded it as an effect of the resistance which opposes the
progress of thought on its normal way to consciousness, and of the
simultaneous attraction exerted upon it by vivid memories. * The
regression in dreams is perhaps facilitated by the cessation of the
progressive stream flowing from the sense-organs during the day; for
which auxiliary factor there must be some compensation, in the other
forms of regression, by the strengthening of the other regressive
motives. We must also bear in mind that in pathological cases of
regression, just as in dreams, the process of energy-transference must
be different from that occurring in the regressions of normal
psychic life, since it renders possible a full hallucinatory
cathexis of the perceptive system. What we have described in the
analysis of the dream-work as regard for representability may be
referred to the selective attraction of visually remembered scenes
touched by the dream-thoughts.
-
* In a statement of the theory of repression it should be
explained that a thought passes into repression owing to the
co-operation of two of the factors which influence it. On the one side
(the censorship of Cs) it is pushed, and from the other side (the Ucs)
it is pulled, much as one is helped to the top of the Great Pyramid.
(Compare the paper Repression, p. 422 below.)
-
As to the regression, we may further observe that it plays a no less
important part in the theory of neurotic symptom-formation than in the
theory of dreams. We may therefore distinguish a threefold species
of regression: (a) a topical one, in the sense of the scheme of the
Psi-systems here exponded; (b) a temporal one, in so far as it is a
regression to older psychic formations; and (c) a formal one, when
primitive modes of expression and representation take the place of the
customary modes. These three forms of regression are, however,
basically one, and in the majority of cases they coincide, for that
which is older in point of time is at the same time formally primitive
and, in the psychic topography, nearer to the perception-end.
We cannot leave the theme of regression in dreams without giving
utterance to an impression which has already and repeatedly forced
itself upon us, and which will return to us reinforced after a
deeper study of the psychoneuroses: namely, that dreaming is on the
whole an act of regression to the earliest relationships of the
dreamer, a resuscitation of his childhood, of the impulses which
were then dominant and the modes of expression which were then
available. Behind this childhood of the individual we are then
promised an insight into the phylogenetic childhood, into the
evolution of the human race, of which the development of the
individual is only an abridged repetition influenced by the fortuitous
circumstances of life. We begin to suspect that Friedrich Nietzsche
was right when he said that in a dream "there persists a primordial
part of humanity which we can no longer reach by a direct path," and
we are encouraged to expect, from the analysis of dreams, a
knowledge of the archaic inheritance of man, a knowledge of
psychical things in him that are innate. It would seem that dreams and
neuroses have preserved for us more of the psychical antiquities
than we suspected; so that psycho-analysis may claim a high rank among
those sciences which endeavour to reconstruct the oldest and darkest
phases of the beginnings of mankind.
It is quite possible that we shall not find this first part of our
psychological evaluation of dreams particularly satisfying. We must,
however, console ourselves with the thought that we are, after all,
compelled to build out into the dark. If we have not gone altogether
astray, we shall surely reach approximately the same place from
another starting-point, and then, perhaps, we shall be better able
to find our bearings.
C. The Wish-Fulfilment
-
The dream of the burning child (cited above) affords us a welcome
opportunity for appreciating the difficulties confronting the theory
of wish-fulfilment. That a dream should be nothing but a
wish-fulfilment must undoubtedly seem strange to us all- and not
only because of the contradiction offered by the anxiety-dream. Once
our first analyses had given us the enlightenment that meaning and
psychic value are concealed behind our dreams, we could hardly have
expected so unitary a determination of this meaning. According to
the correct but summary definition of Aristotle, the dream is a
continuation of thinking in sleep. Now if, during the day, our
thoughts perform such a diversity of psychic acts- judgments,
conclusions, the answering of objections, expectations, intentions,
etc.- why should they be forced at night to confine themselves to
the production of wishes only? Are there not, on the contrary, many
dreams that present an altogether different psychic act in dream-form-
for example, anxious care- and is not the father's unusually
transparent dream of the burning child such a dream? From the gleam of
light that falls upon his eyes while he is asleep the father draws the
apprehensive conclusion that a candle has fallen over and may be
burning the body; he transforms this conclusion into a dream by
embodying it in an obvious situation enacted in the present tense.
What part is played in this dream by the wish-fulfilment? And how
can we possibly mistake the predominance of the thought continued from
the waking state or evoked by the new sensory impression?
All these considerations are justified, and force us to look more
closely into the role of the wish-fulfilment in dreams, and the
significance of the waking thoughts continued in sleep.
It is precisely the wish-fulfilment that has already caused us to
divide all dreams into two groups. We have found dreams which were
plainly wish-fulfilments; and others in which the wish-fulfilment
was unrecognizable and was often concealed by every available means.
In this latter class of dreams we recognized the influence of the
dream-censorship. The undisguised wish-dreams were found chiefly in
children; short, frank wish-dreams seemed (I purposely emphasize
this word) to occur also in adults.
We may now ask whence in each case does the wish that is realized in
the dream originate? But to what opposition or to what diversity do we
relate this whence? I think to the opposition between conscious
daily life and an unconscious psychic activity which is able to make
itself perceptible only at night. I thus, find a threefold possibility
for the origin of a wish. Firstly, it may have been excited during the
day, and owing to external circumstances may have remained
unsatisfied; there is thus left for the night an acknowledged and
unsatisfied wish. Secondly, it may have emerged during the day, only
to be rejected; there is thus left for the night an unsatisfied but
suppressed wish. Thirdly, it may have no relation to daily life, but
may belong to those wishes which awake only at night out of the
suppressed material in us. If we turn to our scheme of the psychic
apparatus, we can localize a wish of the first order in the system
Pcs. We may assume that a wish of the second order has been forced
back from the Pcs system into the Ucs system, where alone, if
anywhere, can it maintain itself; as for the wish-impulse of the third
order, we believe that it is wholly incapable of leaving the Ucs
system. Now, have the wishes arising from these different sources
the same value for the dream, the same power to incite a dream?
On surveying the dreams at our disposal with a view to answering
this question, we are at once moved to add as a fourth source of the
dream-wish the actual wish-impetus which arises during the night
(for example, the stimulus of thirst, and sexual desire). It then
seems to us probable that the source of the dream-wish does not affect
its capacity to incite a dream. I have in mind the dream of the
child who continued the voyage that had been interrupted during the
day, and the other children's dreams cited in the same chapter; they
are explained by an unfulfilled but unsuppressed wish of the
daytime. That wishes suppressed during the day assert themselves in
dreams is shown by a great many examples. I will mention a very simple
dream of this kind. A rather sarcastic lady, whose younger friend
has become engaged to be married, is asked in the daytime by her
acquaintances whether she knows her friend's fiance, and what she
thinks of him. She replies with unqualified praise, imposing silence
on her own judgment, although she would have liked to tell the
truth, namely, that he is a commonplace fellow- one meets such by
the dozen (Dutzendmensch). The following night she dreams that the
same question is put to her, and that she replies with the formula:
"In case of subsequent orders, it will suffice to mention the
reference number." Finally, as the result of numerous analyses, we
learn that the wish in all dreams that have been subject to distortion
has its origin in the unconscious, and could not become perceptible by
day. At first sight, then, it seems that in respect of dream-formation
all wishes are of equal value and equal power.
I cannot prove here that this is not really the true state of
affairs, but I am strongly inclined to assume a stricter determination
of the dream-wish. Children's dreams leave us in no doubt that a
wish unfulfilled during the day may instigate a dream. But we must not
forget that this is, after all, the wish of a child; that it is a
wish-impulse of the strength peculiar to childhood. I very much
doubt whether a wish unfulfilled in the daytime would suffice to
create a dream in an adult. It would rather seem that, as we learn
to control our instinctual life by intellection, we more and more
renounce as unprofitable the formation or retention of such intense
wishes as are natural to childhood. In this, indeed, there may be
individual variations; some retain the infantile type of the psychic
processes longer than others; just as we find such differences in
the gradual decline of the originally vivid visual imagination. In
general, however, I am of the opinion that unfulfilled wishes of the
day are insufficient to produce a dream in adults. I will readily
admit that the wish-impulses originating in consciousness contribute
to the instigation of dreams, but they probably do no more. The
dream would not occur if the preconscious wish were not reinforced
from another source.
That source is the unconscious. I believe that the conscious wish
becomes effective in exciting a dream only when it succeeds in
arousing a similar unconscious wish which reinforces it. From the
indications obtained in the psychoanalysis of the neuroses, I
believe that these unconscious wishes are always active and ready to
express themselves whenever they find an opportunity of allying
themselves with an impulse from consciousness, and transferring
their own greater intensity to the lesser intensity of the latter. *
It must, therefore, seem that the conscious wish alone has been
realized in the dream; but a slight peculiarity in the form of the
dream will put us on the track of the powerful ally from the
unconscious. These ever-active and, as it were, immortal wishes of our
unconscious recall the legendary Titans who, from time immemorial,
have been buried under the mountains which were once hurled upon
them by the victorious gods, and even now quiver from time to time
at the convulsions of their mighty limbs. These wishes, existing in
repression, are themselves of infantile origin, as we learn from the
psychological investigation of the neuroses. Let me, therefore, set
aside the view previously expressed, that it matters little whence the
dream-wish originates, and replace it by another, namely: the wish
manifested in the dream must be an infantile wish. In the adult it
originates in the Ucs, while in the child, in whom no division and
censorship exist as yet between the Pcs and Ucs, or in whom these
are only in process of formation, it is an unfulfilled and unrepressed
wish from the waking state. I am aware that this conception cannot
be generally demonstrated, but I maintain that it can often be
demonstrated even where one would not have suspected it, and that it
cannot be generally refuted.
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* They share this character of indestructibility with all other
psychic acts that are really unconscious- that is, with psychic acts
belonging solely to the system Ucs. These paths are opened once and
for all; they never fall into disease; they conduct the excitation
process to discharge as often as they are charged again with
unconscious excitation. To speak metaphorically, they suffer no
other form of annihilation than did the shades of the lower regions in
the Odyssey, who awoke to new life the moment they drank blood. The
processes depending on the preconscious system are destructible in
quite another sense. The psychotherapy of the neuroses is based on
this difference.
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In dream-formation, the wish-impulses which are left over from the
conscious waking life are, therefore, to be relegated to the
background. I cannot admit that they play any part except that
attributed to the material of actual sensations during sleep in
relation to the dream-content. If I now take into account those
other psychic instigations left over from the waking life of the
day, which are not wishes, I shall merely be adhering to the course
mapped out for me by this line of thought. We may succeed in
provisionally disposing of the energetic cathexis of our waking
thoughts by deciding to go to sleep. He is a good sleeper who can do
this; Napoleon I is reputed to have been a model of this kind. But
we do not always succeed in doing it, or in doing it completely.
Unsolved problems, harassing cares, overwhelming impressions, continue
the activity of our thought even during sleep, maintaining psychic
processes in the system which we have termed the preconscious. The
thought-impulses continued into sleep may be divided into the
following groups:
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1. Those which have not been completed during the day, owing to some
accidental cause.
2. Those which have been left uncompleted because our mental
powers have failed us, i.e., unsolved problems.
3. Those which have been turned back and suppressed during the
day. This is reinforced by a powerful fourth group:
4. Those which have been excited in our Ucs during the day by the
workings of the Pcs; and finally we may add a fifth, consisting of:
5. The indifferent impressions of the day, which have therefore been
left unsettled.
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We need not underrate the psychic intensities introduced into
sleep by these residues of the day's waking life, especially those
emanating from the group of the unsolved issues. It is certain that
these excitations continue to strive for expression during the
night, and we may assume with equal certainty that the state of
sleep renders impossible the usual continuance of the process of
excitation in the preconscious and its termination in becoming
conscious. In so far as we can become conscious of our mental
processes in the ordinary way, even during the night, to that extent
we are simply not asleep. I cannot say what change is produced in
the Pcs system by the state of sleep, * but there is no doubt that the
psychological characteristics of sleep are to be sought mainly in
the cathectic changes occurring just in this system, which
dominates, moreover, the approach to motility, paralysed during sleep.
On the other hand, I have found nothing in the psychology of dreams to
warrant the assumption that sleep produces any but secondary changes
in the conditions of the Ucs system. Hence, for the nocturnal
excitations in the Pcs there remains no other path than that taken
by the wish-excitations from the Ucs; they must seek reinforcement
from the Ucs, and follow the detours of the unconscious excitations.
But what is the relation of the preconscious day-residues to the
dream? There is no doubt that they penetrate abundantly into the
dream; that they utilize the dream-content to obtrude themselves
upon consciousness even during the night; indeed, they sometimes
even dominate the dream-content, and impel it to continue the work
of the day; it is also certain that the day-residues may just as
well have any other character as that of wishes. But it is highly
instructive, and for the theory of wish-fulfilment of quite decisive
importance, to see what conditions they must comply with in order to
be received into the dream.
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* I have endeavoured to penetrate farther into the relations of
the sleeping state and the conditions of hallucination in my essay,
"Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams," Collected
Papers, IV, p. 137.
-
Let us pick out one of the dreams cited above, e.g., the dream in
which my friend Otto seems to show the symptoms of Basedow's disease
(chapter V., D). Otto's appearance gave me some concern during the
day, and this worry, like everything else relating to him, greatly
affected me. I may assume that this concern followed me into sleep.
I was probably bent on finding out what was the matter with him.
During the night my concern found expression in the dream which I have
recorded. Not only was its content senseless, but it failed to show
any wish-fulfilment. But I began to search for the source of this
incongruous expression of the solicitude felt during the day, and
analysis revealed a connection. I identified my friend Otto with a
certain Baron L and myself with a Professor R. There was only one
explanation of my being impelled to select just this substitute for
the day-thought. I must always have been ready in the Ucs to
identify myself with Professor R, as this meant the realization of one
of the immortal infantile wishes, viz., the wish to become great.
Repulsive ideas respecting my friend, ideas that would certainly
have been repudiated in a waking state, took advantage of the
opportunity to creep into the dream; but the worry of the day had
likewise found some sort of expression by means of a substitute in the
dream-content. The day-thought, which was in itself not a wish, but on
the contrary a worry, had in some way to find a connection with some
infantile wish, now unconscious and suppressed, which then allowed it-
duly dressed up- to arise for consciousness. The more domineering
the worry the more forced could be the connection to be established;
between the content of the wish and that of the worry there need be no
connection, nor was there one in our example.
It would perhaps be appropriate, in dealing with this problem, to
inquire how a dream behaves when material is offered to it in the
dream-thoughts which flatly opposes a wish-fulfilment; such as
justified worries, painful reflections and distressing realizations.
The many possible results may be classified as follows: (a) The
dream-work succeeds in replacing all painful ideas by contrary
ideas. and suppressing the painful affect belonging to them. This,
then, results in a pure and simple satisfaction-dream, a palpable
wish-fulfilment, concerning which there is nothing more to be said.
(b) The painful ideas find their way into the manifest
dream-content, more or less modified, but nevertheless quite
recognizable. This is the case which raises doughts about the
wish-theory of dreams, and thus calls for further investigation.
Such dreams with a painful content may either be indifferent in
feeling, or they may convey the whole painful affect, which the
ideas contained in them seem to justify, or they may even lead to
the development of anxiety to the point of waking.
Analysis then shows that even these painful dreams are
wish-fulfilments. An unconscious and repressed wish, whose
fulfilment could only be felt as painful by the dreamer's ego, has
seized the opportunity offered by the continued cathexis of painful
day-residues, has lent them its support, and has thus made them
capable of being dreamed. But whereas in case (a) the unconscious wish
coincided with the conscious one, in case (b) the discord between
the unconscious and the conscious- the repressed material and the ego-
is revealed, and the situation in the fairy-tale, of the three
wishes which the fairy offers to the married couple, is realized
entrepreneur may himself contribute a little of the capital, or
several entrepreneurs may seek the aid of the same capitalist, or
several capitalists may jointly supply the capital required by the
entrepreneurs. Thus there are dreams sustained by more than one
dream-wish, and many similar variations, which may be readily
imagined, and which are of no further interest to us. What is still
lacking to our discussion of the dream-wish we shall only be able to
complete later on.
The tertium comparationis in the analogies here employed, the
quantitative element of which an allotted amount is placed at the free
disposal of the dream, admits of a still closer application to the
elucidation of the dream-structure. As shown in chapter VI., B., we
can recognize in most dreams a centre supplied with a special
sensory intensity. This is, as a rule, the direct representation of
the wish-fulfilment; for, if we reverse the displacements of the
dream-work, we find that the psychic intensity of the elements in
the dream-thoughts is replaced by the sensory intensity of the
elements in the dream-content. The elements in the neighbourhood of
the wish-fulfilment have often nothing to do with its meaning, but
prove to be the offshoots of painful thoughts which are opposed to the
wish. But owing to their connection with the central element, often
artificially established, they secure so large a share of its
intensity as to become capable of representation. Thus, the
representative energy of the wish-fulfilment diffuses itself over a
certain sphere of association, within which all elements are raised to
representation, including even those that are in themselves without
resources. In dreams containing several dynamic wishes we can easily
separate and delimit the spheres of the individual wish-fulfilments,
and we shall find that the gaps in the dream are often of the nature
of boundary-zones.
Although the foregoing remarks have restricted the significance of
the day-residues for the dream, they are none the less deserving of
some further attention. For they must be a necessary ingredient in
dream-formation, inasmuch as experience reveals the surprising fact
that every dream shows in its content a connection with a recent
waking impression, often of the most indifferent kind. So far we
have failed to understand the necessity for this addition to the
dream-mixture (chapter V., A.). This necessity becomes apparent only
when we bear in mind the part played by the unconscious wish, and seek
further information in the psychology of the neuroses. We shall then
learn that an unconscious idea, as such, is quite incapable of
entering into the preconscious, and that it can exert an influence
there only by establishing touch with a harmless idea already
belonging to the preconscious, to which it transfers its intensity,
and by which it allows itself to be screened. This is the fact of
transference, which furnishes the explanation of so many surprising
occurrences in the psychic life of neurotics. The transference may
leave the idea from the preconscious unaltered, though the latter will
thus acquire an unmerited intensity, or it may force upon this some
modification derived from the content of the transferred idea. I trust
the reader will pardon my fondness for comparisons with daily life,
but I feel tempted to say that the situation for the repressed idea is
like that of the American dentist in Austria, who may not carry on his
practice unless he can get a duly installed doctor of medicine to
serve him as a signboard and legal "cover." Further, just as it is not
exactly the busiest physicians who form such alliances with dental
practitioners, so in the psychic life the choice as regards covers for
repressed ideas does not fall upon such preconscious or conscious
ideas as have themselves attracted enough of the attention active in
the preconscious. The unconscious prefers to entangle with its
connections either those impressions and ideas of the preconscious
which have remained unnoticed as being indifferent or those which have
immediately had attention withdrawn from them again (by rejection). it
is a well-known proposition of the theory of associations, confirmed
by all experience, that ideas which have formed a very intimate
connection in one direction assume a negative type of attitude towards
whole groups of new connections. I have even attempted at one time
to base a theory of hysterical paralysis on this principle.
If we assume that the same need of transference on the part of the
repressed ideas, of which we have become aware through the analysis of
the neurosis, makes itself felt in dreams also, we can at once explain
two of the problems of the dream: namely, that every dream-analysis
reveals an interweaving of a recent impression, and that this recent
element is often of the most indifferent character. We may add what we
have already learned elsewhere, that the reason why these recent and
indifferent elements so frequently find their way into the
dream-content as substitutes for the very oldest elements of the
dream-thoughts is that they have the least to fear from the
resisting censorship. But while this freedom from censorship
explains only the preference shown to the trivial elements, the
constant presence of recent elements points to the necessity for
transference. Both groups of impressions satisfy the demand of the
repressed ideas for material still free from associations, the
indifferent ones because they have offered no occasion for extensive
associations, and the recent ones because they have not had sufficient
time to form such associations.
We thus see that the day-residues, among which we may now include
the indifferent impressions, not only borrow something from the Ucs
when they secure a share in dream-formation- namely, the
motive-power at the disposal of the repressed wish- but they also
offer to the unconscious something that is indispensable to it,
namely, the points of attachment necessary for transference. If we
wished to penetrate more deeply into the psychic processes, we
should have to throw a clearer light on the play of excitations
between the preconscious and the unconscious, and indeed the study
of the psychoneuroses would impel us to do so; but dreams, as it
happens, give us no help in this respect.
Just one further remark as to the day-residues. There is no doubt
that it is really these that disturb our sleep, and not our dreams
which, on the contrary, strive to guard our sleep. But we shall return
to this point later.
So far we have discussed the dream-wish; we have traced it back to
the sphere of the Ucs, and have analysed its relation to the
day-residues, which, in their turn, may be either wishes, or psychic
impulses of any other kind, or simply recent impressions. We have thus
found room for the claims that can be made for the dream-forming
significance of our waking mental activity in all its
multifariousness. It might even prove possible to explain, on the
basis of our train of thought, those extreme cases in which the dream,
continuing the work of the day, brings to a happy issue an unsolved
problem of waking life. We merely lack a suitable example to
analyse, in order to uncover the infantile or repressed source of
wishes, the tapping of which has so successfully reinforced the
efforts of the preconscious activity. But we are not a step nearer
to answering the question: Why is it that the unconscious can
furnish in sleep nothing more than the motive-power for a
wish-fulfilment? The answer to this question must elucidate the
psychic nature of the state of wishing: and it will be given with
the aid of the notion of the psychic apparatus.
We do not doubt that this apparatus, too, has only arrived at its
present perfection by a long process of evolution. Let us attempt to
restore it as it existed in an earlier stage of capacity. From
postulates to be confirmed in other ways, we know that at first the
apparatus strove to keep itself as free from stimulation as
possible, and therefore, in its early structure, adopted the
arrangement of a reflex apparatus, which enabled it promptly to
discharge by the motor paths any sensory excitation reaching it from
without. But this simple function was disturbed by the exigencies of
life, to which the apparatus owes the impetus toward further
development. The exigencies of life first confronted it in the form of
the great physical needs. The excitation aroused by the inner need
seeks an outlet in motility, which we may describe as internal
change or expression of the emotions. The hungry child cries or
struggles helplessly. But its situation remains unchanged; for the
excitation proceeding from the inner need has not the character of a
momentary impact, but of a continuing pressure. A change can occur
only if, in some way (in the case of the child by external
assistance), there is an experience of satisfaction, which puts an end
to the internal excitation. An essential constituent of this
experience is the appearance of a certain percept (of food in our
example), the memory-image of which is henceforth associated with
the memory-trace of the excitation arising from the need. Thanks to
the established connection, there results, at the next occurrence of
this need, a psychic impulse which seeks to revive the memory-image of
the former percept, and to re-evoke the former percept itself; that
is, it actually seeks to re-establish the situation of the first
satisfaction. Such an impulse is what we call a wish; the reappearance
of the perception constitutes the wish-fulfilment, and the full
cathexis of the perception, by the excitation springing from the need,
constitutes the shortest path to the wish-fulfilment. We may assume
a primitive state of the psychic apparatus in which this path is
actually followed, i.e., in which the wish ends in hallucination. This
first psychic activity therefore aims at an identity of perception:
that is, at a repetition of that perception which is connected with
the satisfaction of the need.
This primitive mental activity must have been modified by bitter
practical experience into a secondary and more appropriate activity.
The establishment of identity of perception by the short regressive
path within the apparatus does not produce the same result in
another respect as follows upon cathexis of the same perception coming
from without. The satisfaction does not occur, and the need continues.
In order to make the internal cathexis equivalent to the external one,
the former would have to be continuously sustained, just as actually
happens in the hallucinatory psychoses and in hunger-phantasies, which
exhaust their performance in maintaining their hold on the object
desired. In order to attain to more appropriate use of the psychic
energy, it becomes necessary to suspend the full regression, so that
it does not proceed beyond the memory-image, and thence can seek other
paths, leading ultimately to the production of the desired identity
from the side of the outer world. * This inhibition, as well as the
subsequent deflection of the excitation, becomes the task of a
second system, which controls voluntary motility, i.e., a system whose
activity first leads on to the use of motility for purposes remembered
in advance. But all this complicated mental activity, which works
its way from the memory-image to the production of identity of
perception via the outer world, merely represents a roundabout way
to wish-fulfilment made necessary by experience. *(2) Thinking is
indeed nothing but a substitute for the hallucinatory wish; and if the
dream is called a wish-fulfilment, this becomes something
self-evident, since nothing but a wish can impel our psychic apparatus
to activity. The dream, which fulfils its wishes by following the
short regressive path, has thereby simply preserved for us a
specimen of the primary method of operation of the psychic
apparatus, which has been abandoned as inappropriate. What once
prevailed in the waking state, when our psychic life was still young
and inefficient, seems to have been banished into our nocturnal
life; just as we still find in the nursery those discarded primitive
weapons of adult humanity, the bow and arrow. Dreaming is a fragment
of the superseded psychic life of the child. In the psychoses, those
modes of operation of the psychic apparatus which are normally
suppressed in the waking state reassert themselves, and thereupon
betray their inability to satisfy our demands in the outer world. *(3)
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* In other words: the introduction of a test of reality is
recognized as necessary.
*(2) Le Lorrain justly extols the wish-fulfilments of dreams:
"Sans fatigue serieuse, sans etre oblige de recourir a cette lutte
opiniatre et longue qui use et corrode les jouissances poursuivies."
[Without serious fatigue, without being obliged to have recourse to
that long and stubborn struggle which exhausts and wears away
pleasures sought.]
*(3) I have further elaborated this train of thought elsewhere,
where I have distinguished the two principles involved as the
pleasure-principle and the reality-principle. Formulations regarding
the Two Principles in Mental Functioning, in Collected Papers, Vol.
iv. p. 13.
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The unconscious wish-impulses evidently strive to assert
themselves even during the day, and the fact of transference, as
well as the psychoses, tells us that they endeavour to force their way
through the preconscious system to consciousness and the command of
motility. Thus, in the censorship between Ucs and Pcs, which the dream
forces us to assume, we must recognize and respect the guardian of our
psychic health. But is it not carelessness on the part of this
guardian to diminish his vigilance at night, and to allow the
suppressed impulses of the Ucs to achieve expression, thus again
making possible the process of hallucinatory regression? I think
not, for when the critical guardian goes to rest- and we have proof
that his slumber is not profound- he takes care to close the gate to
motility. No matter what impulses from the usually inhibited Ucs may
bustle about the stage, there is no need to interfere with them;
they remain harmless, because they are not in a position to set in
motion the motor apparatus which alone can operate to produce any
change in the outer world. Sleep guarantees the security of the
fortress which has to be guarded. The state of affairs is less
harmless when a displacement of energies is produced, not by the
decline at night in the energy put forth by the critical censorship,
but by the pathological enfeeblement of the latter, or the
pathological reinforcement of the unconscious excitations, and this
while the preconscious is cathected and the gates of motility are
open. The guardian is then overpowered; the unconscious excitations
subdue the Pcs, and from the Pcs they dominate our speech and
action, or they enforce hallucinatory regressions, thus directing an
apparatus not designed for them by virtue of the attraction exerted by
perceptions on the distribution of our psychic energy. We call this
condition psychosis.
We now find ourselves in the most favourable position for continuing
the construction of our psychological scaffolding, which we left after
inserting the two systems, Ucs and Pcs. However, we still have
reason to give further consideration to the wish as the sole psychic
motive-power in the dream. We have accepted the explanation that the
reason why the dream is in every case a wish-fulfilment is that it
is a function of the system Ucs, which knows no other aim than
wish-fulfilment, and which has at its disposal no forces other than
the wish-impulses. Now if we want to continue for a single moment
longer to maintain our right to develop such far-reaching
psychological speculations from the facts of dream-interpretation,
we are in duty bound to show that they insert the dream into a context
which can also embrace other psychic structures. If there exists a
system of the Ucs- or something sufficiently analogous for the
purposes of our discussion- the dream cannot be its sole
manifestation; every dream may be a wish-fulfilment, but there must be
other forms of abnormal wish-fulfilment as well as dreams. And in fact
the theory of all psychoneurotic symptoms culminates in the one
proposition that they, too, must be conceived as wish-fulfilments of
the unconscious. * Our explanation makes the dream only the first
member of a series of the greatest importance for the psychiatrist,
the understanding of which means the solution of the purely
psychological part of the psychiatric problem. *(2) But in other
members of this group of wish-fulfilments- for example, in the
hysterical symptoms- I know of one essential characteristic which I
have so far failed to find in the dream. Thus, from the investigations
often alluded to in this treatise, I know that the formation of an
hysterical symptom needs a junction of both the currents of our
psychic life. The symptom is not merely the expression of a realized
unconscious wish; the latter must be joined by another wish from the
preconscious, which is fulfilled by the same symptom; so that the
symptom is at least doubly determined, once by each of the conflicting
systems. Just as in dreams, there is no limit to further
over-determination. The determination which does not derive from the
Ucs is, as far as I can see, invariably a thought-stream of reaction
against the unconscious wish; for example, a self-punishment. Hence
I can say, quite generally, that an hysterical symptom originates only
where two contrary wish-fulfilments, having their source in different
psychic systems, are able to meet in a single expression. *(3)
Examples would help us but little here, as nothing but a complete
unveiling of the complications in question can carry conviction. I
will therefore content myself with the bare assertion, and will cite
one example, not because it proves anything, but simply as an
illustration. The hysterical vomiting of a female patient proved, on
the one hand, to be the fulfilment of an unconscious phantasy from
the years of puberty- namely, the wish that she might be continually
pregnant, and have a multitude of children; and this was
subsequently supplemented by the wish that she might have them by as
many fathers as possible. Against this immoderate wish there arose a
powerful defensive reaction. But as by the vomiting the patient
might have spoilt her figure and her beauty, so that she would no
longer find favour in any man's eyes, the symptom was also in
keeping with the punitive trend of thought, and so, being admissible
on both sides, it was allowed to become a reality. This is the same
way of acceding to a wish-fulfilment as the queen of the Parthians was
pleased to adopt in the case of the triumvir Crassus. Believing that
he had undertaken his campaign out of greed for gold, she caused
molten gold to be poured into the throat of the corpse. "Here thou
hast what thou hast longed for!"
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* Expressed more exactly: One portion of the symptom corresponds
to the unconscious wish-fulfilment, while the other corresponds to the
reaction-formation opposed to it.
*(2) Hughlings Jackson has expressed himself as follows: "Find out
all about dreams, and you will have found out all about insanity."
*(3) Cf. my latest formulation (in Zeitschrift fur
Sexual-wissenschaft, Bd. I) of the origin of hysterical symptoms in
the treatise on "Hysterical Phantasies and their Relation to
Bisexuality," Collected Papers, II, p. 51. This forms chapter X of
Selected Papers on Hysteria, p. 115 above.
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Of the dream we know as yet only that it expresses a wish-fulfilment
of the unconscious; and apparently the dominant preconscious system
permits this fulfilment when it has compelled the wish to undergo
certain distortions. We are, moreover, not in fact in a position to
demonstrate regularly the presence of a train of thought opposed to
the dream-wish, which is realized in the dream as well as its
antagonist. Only now and then have we found in dream-analyses signs of
reaction-products as, for instance, my affection for my friend R in
the dream of my uncle (chapter IV.). But the contribution from the
preconscious which is missing here may be found in another place.
The dream can provide expression for a wish from the Ucs by means of
all sorts of distortions, once the dominant system has withdrawn
itself into the wish to sleep, and has realized this wish by producing
the changes of cathexis within the psychic apparatus which are
within its power; thereupon holding on to the wish in question for the
whole duration of sleep. *
-
* This idea has been borrowed from the theory of sleep of
Liebault, who revived hypnotic research in modern times (Du Sommeil
provoque, etc., Paris [1889]).
-
Now this persistent wish to sleep on the part of the preconscious
has a quite general facilitating effect on the formation of dreams.
Let us recall the dream of the father who, by the gleam of light
from the death-chamber, was led to conclude that his child's body
might have caught fire. We have shown that one of the psychic forces
decisive in causing the father to draw this conclusion in the dream
instead of allowing himself to be awakened by the gleam of light was
the wish to prolong the life of the child seen in the dream by one
moment. Other wishes originating in the repressed have probably
escaped us, for we are unable to analyse this dream. But as a second
source of motive-power in this dream we may add the father's desire to
sleep, for, like the life of the child, the father's sleep is
prolonged for a moment by the dream. The underlying motive is: "Let
the dream go on, or I must wake up." As in this dream, so in all
others, the wish to sleep lends its support to the unconscious wish.
In chapter III. we cited dreams which were manifestly dreams of
convenience. But in truth all dreams may claim this designation. The
efficacy of the wish to go on sleeping is most easily recognized in
the awakening dreams, which so elaborate the external sensory stimulus
that it becomes compatible with the continuance of sleep; they weave
it into a dream in order to rob it of any claims it might make as a
reminder of the outer world. But this wish to go on sleeping must also
play its part in permitting all other dreams, which can only act as
disturbers of the state of sleep from within. "Don't worry; sleep
on; it's only a dream," is in many cases the suggestion of the Pcs
to consciousness when the dream gets too bad; and this describes in
a quite general way the attitude of our dominant psychic activity
towards dreaming, even though the thought remains unuttered. I must
draw the conclusion that throughout the whole of our sleep we are just
as certain that we are dreaming as we are certain that we are
sleeping. It is imperative to disregard the objection that our
consciousness is never directed to the latter knowledge, and that it
is directed to the former knowledge only on special occasions, when
the censorship feels, as it were, taken by surprise. On the
contrary, there are persons in whom the retention at night of the
knowledge that they are sleeping and dreaming becomes quite
manifest, and who are thus apparently endowed with the conscious
faculty of guiding their dream-life. Such a dreamer, for example, is
dissatisfied with the turn taken by a dream; he breaks it off
without waking, and begins it afresh, in order to continue it along
different lines, just like a popular author who, upon request, gives a
happier ending to his play. Or on another occasion, when the dream
places him in a sexually exciting situation, he thinks in his sleep:
"I don't want to continue this dream and exhaust myself by an
emission; I would rather save it for a real situation."
The Marquis Hervey (Vaschide) declared that he had gained such power
over his dreams that he could accelerate their course at will, and
turn them in any direction he wished. It seems that in him the wish to
sleep had accorded a place to another, a preconscious wish, the wish
to observe his dreams and to derive pleasure from them. Sleep is
just as compatible with such a wish-resolve as it is with some proviso
as a condition of waking up (wet-nurse's sleep), We know, too, that in
all persons an interest in dreams greatly increases the number of
dreams remembered after waking.
Concerning other observations as to the guidance of dreams, Ferenczi
states: "The dream takes the thought that happens to occupy our
psychic life at the moment, and elaborates it from all sides. It
lets any given dream-picture drop when there is a danger that the
wish-fulfilment will miscarry, and attempts a new kind of solution,
until it finally succeeds in creating a wish-fulfilment that satisfies
in one compromise both instances of the psychic life."
D. Waking Caused by Dreams. The Function of Dreams.
The Anxiety Dream
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Now that we know that throughout the night the preconscious is
orientated to the wish to sleep, we can follow the dream-process
with proper understanding. But let us first summarize what we
already know about this process. We have seen that day-residues are
left over from the waking activity of the mind, residues from which it
has not been possible to withdraw all cathexis. Either one of the
unconscious wishes has been aroused through the waking activity during
the day or it so happens that the two coincide; we have already
discussed the multifarious possibilities. Either already during the
day or only on the establishment of the state of sleep the unconscious
wish has made its way to the day-residues, and has effected a
transference to them. Thus there arises a wish transferred to recent
material; or the suppressed recent wish is revived by a
reinforcement from the unconscious. This wish now endeavours to make
its way to consciousness along the normal path of the thought
processes, through the preconscious, to which indeed it belongs by
virtue of one of its constituent elements. It is, however,
confronted by the censorship which still subsists, and to whose
influence it soon succumbs. It now takes on the distortion for which
the way has already been paved by the transference to recent material.
So far it is on the way to becoming something resembling an obsession,
a delusion, or the like, i.e., a thought reinforced by a transference,
and distorted in expression owing to the censorship. But its further
progress is now checked by the state of sleep of the preconscious;
this system has presumably protected itself against invasion by
diminishing its excitations. The dream-process, therefore, takes the
regressive course, which is just opened up by the peculiarity of the
sleeping state, and in so doing follows the attraction exerted on it
by memory-groups, which are, in part only, themselves present as
visual cathexis, not as translations into the symbols of the later
systems. On its way to regression it acquires representability. The
subject of compression will be discussed later. The dream-process
has by this time covered the second part of its contorted course.
The first part threads its way progressively from the unconscious
scenes or phantasies to the preconscious, while the second part
struggles back from the boundary of the censorship to the tract of the
perceptions. But when the dream-process becomes a
perception-content, it has, so to speak, eluded the obstacle set up in
the Pcs by the censorship and the sleeping state. It succeeds in
drawing attention to itself, and in being remarked by consciousness.
For consciousness, which for us means a sense-organ for the
apprehension of psychic qualities, can be excited in waking life
from two sources: firstly, from the periphery of the whole
apparatus, the perceptive system; and secondly, from the excitations
of pleasure and pain which emerge as the sole psychic qualities
yielded by the transpositions of energy in the interior of the
apparatus. All other processes in the Psi-systems, even those in the
preconscious, are devoid of all psychic quality, and are therefore not
objects of consciousness, inasmuch as they do not provide either
pleasure or pain for its perception. We shall have to assume that
these releases of pleasure and pain automatically regulate the
course of the cathectic processes. But in order to make possible
more delicate performances, it subsequently proved necessary to render
the flow of ideas more independent of pain-signals. To accomplish
this, the Pcs system needed qualities of its own which could attract
consciousness, and most probably received them through the
connection of the preconscious processes with the memory-system of
speech-symbols, which was not devoid of quality. Through the qualities
of this system, consciousness, hitherto only a sense-organ for
perceptions, now becomes also a sense-organ for a part of our
thought-processes. There are now, as it were, two sensory surfaces,
one turned toward perception and the other toward the preconscious
thought-processes.
I must assume that the sensory surface of consciousness which is
turned to the preconscious is rendered far more unexcitable by sleep
than the surface turned toward the P-system. The giving up of interest
in the nocturnal thought-process is, of course, an appropriate
procedure. Nothing is to happen in thought; the preconscious wants
to sleep. But once the dream becomes perception, it is capable of
exciting consciousness through the qualities now gained. The sensory
excitation performs what is in fact its function; namely, it directs a
part of the cathectic energy available in the Pcs to the exciting
cause in the form of attention. We must therefore admit that the dream
always has a waking effect- that is, it calls into activity part of
the quiescent energy of the Pcs. Under the influence of this energy,
it now undergoes the process which we have described as secondary
elaboration with a view to coherence and comprehensibility. This means
that the dream is treated by this energy like any other
perception-content; it is subjected to the same anticipatory ideas
as far, at least, as the material allows. As far as this third part of
the dream-process has any direction, this is once more progressive.
To avoid misunderstanding, it will not be amiss to say a few words
as to the temporal characteristics of these dream-processes. In a very
interesting discussion, evidently suggested by Maury's puzzling
guillotine dream, Goblot tries to demonstrate that a dream takes up no
other time than the transition period between sleeping and waking. The
process of waking up requires time; during this time the dream occurs.
It is supposed that the final picture of the dream is so vivid that it
forces the dreamer to wake; in reality it is so vivid only because
when it appears the dreamer is already very near waking. "Un reve,
c'est un reveil qui commence." *
-
* A dream is the beginning of wakening.
-
It has already been pointed out by Dugas that Goblot, in order to
generalize his theory, was forced to ignore a great many facts.
There are also dreams from which we do not awaken; for example, many
dreams in which we dream that we dream. From our knowledge of the
dream-work, we can by no means admit that it extends only over the
period of waking. On the contrary, we must consider it probable that
the first part of the dream-work is already begun during the day, when
we are still under the domination of the preconscious. The second
phase of the dream-work, viz., the alteration by the censorship, the
attraction exercised by unconscious scenes, and the penetration to
perception, continues probably all through the night, and
accordingly we may always be correct when we report a feeling that
we have been dreaming all night, even although we cannot say what we
have dreamed. I do not however, think that it is necessary to assume
that up to the time of becoming conscious the dream-processes really
follow the temporal sequence which we have described; viz., that there
is first the transferred dream-wish, then the process of distortion
due to the censorship, and then the change of direction to regression,
etc. We were obliged to construct such a sequence for the sake of
description; in reality, however, it is probably rather a question
of simultaneously trying this path and that, and of the excitation
fluctuating to and fro, until finally, because it has attained the
most apposite concentration, one particular grouping remains in the
field. Certain personal experiences even incline me to believe that
the dream-work often requires more than one day and one night to
produce its result, in which case the extraordinary art manifested
in the construction of the dream is shorn of its miraculous character.
In my opinion, even the regard for the comprehensibility of the
dream as a perceptual event may exert its influence before the dream
attracts consciousness to itself. From this point, however, the
process is accelerated, since the dream is henceforth subjected to the
same treatment as any other perception. It is like fire works, which
require hours for their preparation and then flare up in a moment.
Through the dream-work, the dream-process now either gains
sufficient intensity to attract consciousness to itself and to
arouse the preconscious (quite independently of the time or profundity
of sleep), or its intensity is insufficient, and it must wait in
readiness until attion, becoming more alert immediately before waking,
meets it half-way. Most dreams seem to operate with relatively
slight psychic intensities, for they wait for the process of waking.
This, then, explains the fact that as a rule we perceive something
dreamed if we are suddenly roused from a deep sleep. Here, as well
as in spontaneous waking, our first glance lights upon the
perception-content created by the dream-work, while the next falls
on that provided by the outer world.
But of greater theoretical interest are those dreams which are
capable of waking us in the midst of our sleep. We may bear in mind
the purposefulness which can be demonstrated in all other cases, and
ask ourselves why the dream, that is, the unconscious wish, is granted
the power to disturb our sleep, i.e., the fulfilment of the
preconscious wish. The explanation is probably to be found in
certain relations of energy which we do not yet understand. If we
did so, we should probably find that the freedom given to the dream
and the expenditure upon it of a certain detached attention
represent a saving of energy as against the alternative case of the
unconscious having to be held in check at night just as it is during
the day. As experience shows, dreaming, even if it interrupts our
sleep several times a night, still remains compatible with sleep. We
wake up for a moment, and immediately fall asleep again. It is like
driving off a fly in our sleep; we awake ad hoc. When we fall asleep
again we have removed the cause of disturbance. The familiar
examples of the sleep of wet-nurses, etc., show that the fulfilment of
the wish to sleep is quite compatible with the maintenance of a
certain amount of attention in a given direction.
But we must here take note of an objection which is based on a
greater knowledge of the unconscious processes. We have ourselves
described the unconscious wishes as always active, whilst nevertheless
asserting that in the daytime they are not strong enough to make
themselves perceptible. But when the state of sleep supervenes, and
the unconscious wish has shown its power to form a dream, and with
it to awaken the preconscious, why does this power lapse after
cognizance has been taken of the dream? Would it not seem more
probable that the dream should continually renew itself, like the
disturbing fly which, when driven away, takes pleasure in returning
again and again? What justification have we for our assertion that the
dream removes the disturbance to sleep?
It is quite true that the unconscious wishes are always active. They
represent paths which are always practicable, whenever a quantum of
excitation makes use of them. It is indeed an outstanding
peculiarity of the unconscious processes that they are indestructible.
Nothing can be brought to an end in the unconscious; nothing is past
or forgotten. This is impressed upon us emphatically in the study of
the neuroses, and especially of hysteria. The unconscious path of
thought which leads to the discharge through an attack is forthwith
passable again when there is a sufficient accumulation of
excitation. The mortification suffered thirty years ago operates,
after having gained access to the unconscious sources of affect,
during all these thirty years as though it were a recent experience.
Whenever its memory is touched, it revives, and shows itself to be
cathected with excitation which procures a motor discharge for
itself in an attack. It is precisely here that psychotherapy must
intervene, its task being to ensure that the unconscious processes are
settled and forgotten. Indeed, the fading of memories and the weak
affect of impressions which are no longer recent, which we are apt
to take as self-evident, and to explain as a primary effect of time on
our psychic memory-residues, are in reality secondary changes
brought about by laborious work. It is the preconscious that
accomplishes this work; and the only course which psychotherapy can
pursue is to bring the Ucs under the dominion of the Pcs.
There are, therefore, two possible issues for any single unconscious
excitation-process. Either it is left to itself, in which case it
ultimately breaks through somewhere and secures, on this one occasion,
a discharge for its excitation into motility, or it succumbs to the
influence of the preconscious, and through this its excitation becomes
bound instead of being discharged. It is the latter case that occurs
in the dream-process. The cathexis from the Pcs which goes to meet the
dream once this has attained to perception, because it has been
drawn thither by the excitation of consciousness, binds the
unconscious excitation of the dream and renders it harmless as a
disturber of sleep. When the dreamer wakes up for a moment, he has
really chased away the fly that threatened to disturb his sleep. We
may now begin to suspect that it is really more expedient and
economical to give way to the unconscious wish, to leave clear its
path to regression so that and it may form a dream, and then to bind
and dispose of this dream by means of a small outlay of preconscious
work, than to hold the unconscious in check throughout the whole
period of sleep. It was, indeed, to be expected that the dream, even
if originally it was not a purposeful process, would have seized
upon some definite function in the play of forces of the psychic life.
We now see what this function is. The dream has taken over the task of
bringing the excitation of the Ucs, which had been left free, back
under the domination of the preconscious; it thus discharges the
excitation of the Ucs, acts as a safety-valve for the latter, and at
the same time, by a slight outlay of waking activity, secures the
sleep of the preconscious. Thus, like the other psychic formations
of its group, the dream offers itself as a compromise, serving both
systems simultaneously, by fulfilling the wishes of both, in so far as
they are mutually compatible. A glance at Robert's "elimination
theory" will show that we must agree with this author on his main
point, namely, the determination of the function of dreams, though
we differ from him in our general presuppositions and in our
estimation of the dream-process. *
-
* Is this the only function which we can attribute to dreams? I know
of no other. A. Maeder, to be sure, has endeavoured to claim for the
dream yet other secondary functions. He started from the just
observation that many dreams contain attempts to provide solutions
of conflicts, which are afterwards actually carried through. They thus
behave like preparatory practice for waking activities. He therefore
drew a parallel between dreaming and the play of animals and children,
which is to be conceived as a training of the inherited instincts, and
a preparation for their later serious activity, thus setting up a
fonction ludique for the dream. A little while before Maeder, Alfred
Adler likewise emphasized the function of thinking ahead in the dream.
(An analysis which I published in 1905 contained a dream which may
be conceived as a resolution-dream, which was repeated night after
night until it was realized.)
But an obvious reflection must show us that this secondary
function of the dream has no claim to recognition within the framework
of any dream-interpretation. Thinking ahead, making resolutions,
sketching out attempted solutions which can then perhaps be realized
in waking life- these and many more performances are functions of
the unconscious and preconscious activities of the mind which continue
as day-residues in the sleeping state, and can then combine with an
unconscious wish to form a dream (chapter VII., C.). The function of
thinking ahead in the dream is thus rather a function of
preconscious waking thought, the result of which may be disclosed to
us by the analysis of dreams or other phenomena. After the dream has
so long been fused with its manifest content, one must now guard
against confusing it with the latent dream-thoughts.
-
The above qualification- in so far as the two wishes are mutually
compatible- contains a suggestion that there may be cases in which the
function of the dream fails. The dream-process is, to begin with,
admitted as a wish-fulfilment of the unconscious, but if this
attempted wish-fulfilment disturbs the preconscious so profoundly that
the latter can no longer maintain its state of rest, the dream has
broken the compromise, and has failed to perform the second part of
its task. It is then at once broken off, and replaced by complete
awakening. But even here it is not really the fault of the dream if,
though at other times the guardian, it has now to appear as the
disturber of sleep, nor need this prejudice us against its averred
purposive character. This is not the only instance in the organism
in which a contrivance that is usually to the purpose becomes
inappropriate and disturbing so soon as something is altered in the
conditions which engender it; the disturbance, then, at all events
serves the new purpose of indicating the change, and of bringing
into play against it the means of adjustment of the organism. Here, of
course, I am thinking of the anxiety-dream, and lest it should seem
that I try to evade this witness against the theory of wish-fulfilment
whenever I encounter it, I will at least give some indications as to
the explanation of the anxiety-dream.
That a psychic process which develops anxiety may still be a
wish-fulfilment has long ceased to imply any contradiction for us.
We may explain this occurrence by the fact that the wish belongs to
one system (the Ucs), whereas the other system (the Pcs) has
rejected and suppressed it. * The subjection of the Ucs by the Pcs
is not thoroughgoing even in perfect psychic health; the extent of
this suppression indicates the degree of our psychic normality.
Neurotic symptoms indicate to us that the two systems are in mutual
conflict; the symptoms are the result of a compromise in this
conflict, and they temporarily put an end to it. On the one hand, they
afford the Ucs a way out for the discharge of its excitation- they
serve it as a kind of sally-gate- while, on the other hand, they
give the Pcs the possibility of dominating the Ucs in some degree.
It is instructive to consider, for example, the significance of a
hysterical phobia, or of agoraphobia. A neurotic is said to be
incapable of crossing the street alone, and this we should rightly
call a symptom. Let someone now remove this symptom by constraining
him to this action which he deems himself incapable of performing. The
result will be an attack of anxiety, just as an attack of anxiety in
the street has often been the exciting cause of the establishment of
an agoraphobia. We thus learn that the symptom has been constituted in
order to prevent the anxiety from breaking out. The phobia is thrown
up before the anxiety like a frontier fortress.
-
* General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, p. 534 below.
-
We cannot enlarge further on this subject unless we examine the role
of the affects in these processes, which can only be done here
imperfectly. We will therefore affirm the proposition that the
principal reason why the suppression of the Ucs becomes necessary is
that, if the movement of ideas in the Ucs were allowed to run its
course, it would develop an affect which originally had the
character of pleasure, but which, since the process of repression,
bears the character of pain. The aim, as well as the result, of the
suppression is to prevent the development of this pain. The
suppression extends to the idea-content of the Ucs, because the
liberation of pain might emanate from this idea-content. We here
take as our basis a quite definite assumption as to the nature of
the development of affect. This is regarded as a motor or secretory
function, the key to the innervation of which is to be found in the
ideas of the Ucs. Through the domination of the Pcs these ideas are as
it were strangled, that is, inhibited from sending out the impulse
that would develop the affect. The danger which arises, if cathexis by
the Pcs ceases, thus consists in the fact that the unconscious
excitations would liberate an affect that- in consequence of the
repression that has previously occurred- could only be felt as pain or
anxiety.
This danger is released if the dream-process is allowed to have
its own way. The conditions for its realization are that repressions
shall have occurred, and that the suppressed wish-impulses can
become sufficiently strong. They, therefore, fall entirely outside the
psychological framework of dream-formation. Were it not for the fact
that our theme is connected by just one factor with the theme of the
development of anxiety, namely, by the setting free of the Ucs
during sleep, I could refrain from the discussion of the anxiety-dream
altogether, and thus avoid all the obscurities involved in it.
The theory of the anxiety-dream belongs, as I have already
repeatedly stated, to the psychology of the neuroses. I might
further add that anxiety in dreams is an anxiety-problem and not a
dream-problem. Having once exhibited the point of contact of the
psychology of the neuroses with the theme of the dream-process, we
have nothing further to do with it. There is only one thing left which
I can do. Since I have asserted that neurotic anxiety has its origin
in sexual sources, I can subject anxiety-dreams to analysis in order
to demonstrate the sexual material in their dream-thoughts.
For good reasons, I refrain from citing any of the examples so
abundantly placed at my disposal by neurotic patients, and prefer to
give some anxiety-dreams of children.
Personally, I have had no real anxiety-dream for decades, but I do
recall one from my seventh or eighth year which I subjected to
interpretation some thirty years later. The dream was very vivid,
and showed me my beloved mother, with a peculiarly calm, sleeping
countenance, carried into the room and laid on the bed by two (or
three) persons with birds' beaks. I awoke crying and screaming, and
disturbed my parents' sleep. The peculiarly draped, excessively tall
figures with beaks I had taken from the illustrations of
Philippson's Bible; I believe they represented deities with the
heads of sparrowhawks from an Egyptian tomb-relief. The analysis
yielded, however, also the recollection of a house-porter's boy, who
used to play with us children on a meadow in front of the house; I
might add that his name was Philip. It seemed to me then that I
first heard from this boy the vulgar word signifying sexual
intercourse, which is replaced among educated persons by the Latin
word coitus, but which the dream plainly enough indicates by the
choice of the birds' heads. I must have guessed the sexual
significance of the word from the look of my worldly-wise teacher.
My mother's expression in the dream was copied from the countenance of
my grandfather, whom I had seen a few days before his death snoring in
a state of coma. The interpretation of the secondary elaboration in
the dream must therefore have been that my mother was dying; the
tomb-relief, too, agrees with this. I awoke with this anxiety, and
could not calm myself until I had waked my parents. I remember that
I suddenly became calm when I saw my mother; it was as though I had
needed the assurance: then she was not dead. But this secondary
interpretation of the dream had only taken place when the influence of
the developed anxiety was already at work. I was not in a state of
anxiety because I had dreamt that my mother was dying; I interpreted
the dream in this manner in the preconscious elaboration because I was
already under the domination of the anxiety. The latter, however,
could be traced back, through the repression to a dark, plainly sexual
craving, which had found appropriate expression in the visual
content of the dream.
A man twenty-seven years of age, who had been seriously ill for a
year, had repeatedly dreamed, between the ages of eleven and thirteen,
dreams attended with great anxiety, to the effect that a man with a
hatchet was running after him; he wanted to run away, but seemed to be
paralysed, and could not move from the spot. This may be taken as a
good and typical example of a very common anxiety-dream, free from any
suspicion of a sexual meaning. In the analysis, the dreamer first
thought of a story told him by his uncle (chronologically later than
the dream), viz., that he was attacked at night in the street by a
suspicious-looking individual; and he concluded from this
association that he might have heard of a similar episode at the
time of the dream. In association with the hatchet, he recalled that
during this period of his life he once hurt his hand with a hatchet
while chopping wood. This immediately reminded him of his relations
with his younger brother, whom he used to maltreat and knock down.
He recalled, in particular, one occasion when he hit his brother's
head with his boot and made it bleed, and his mother said: "I'm afraid
he will kill him one day." While he seemed to be thus held by the
theme of violence, a memory from his ninth year suddenly emerged.
His parents had come home late and had gone to bed, whilst he was
pretending to be asleep. He soon heard panting, and other sounds
that seemed to him mysterious, and he could also guess the position of
his parents in bed. His further thoughts showed that he had
established an analogy between this relation between his parents and
his own relation to his younger brother. He subsumed what was
happening between his parents under the notion of "an act of
violence and a fight." The fact that he had frequently noticed blood
in his mother's bed corroborated this conception.
That the sexual intercourse of adults appears strange and alarming
to children who observe it, and arouses anxiety in them, is, I may
say, a fact established by everyday experience. I have explained
this anxiety on the ground that we have here a sexual excitation which
is not mastered by the child's understanding, and which probably
also encounters repulsion because their parents are involved, and is
therefore transformed into anxiety. At a still earlier period of
life the sexual impulse towards the parent of opposite sex does not
yet suffer repression, but as we have seen (chapter V., D.)
expresses itself freely.
For the night terrors with hallucinations (pavor nocturnus) so
frequent in children I should without hesitation offer the same
explanation. These, too, can only be due to misunderstood and rejected
sexual impulses which, if recorded, would probably show a temporal
periodicity, since an intensification of sexual libido may equally
be produced by accidentally exciting impressions and by spontaneous
periodic processes of development.
I have not the necessary observational material for the full
demonstration of this explanation. * On the other hand, pediatrists
seem to lack the point of view which alone makes intelligible the
whole series of phenomena, both from the somatic and from the
psychic side. To illustrate by a comical example how closely, if one
is made blind by the blinkers of medical mythology, one may pass by
the understanding of such cases, I will cite a case which I found in a
thesis on pavor nocturnus (Debacker, 1881, p. 66).
-
* This material has since been provided in abundance by the
literature of psycho-analysis.
-
A boy of thirteen, in delicate health, began to be anxious and
dreamy; his sleep became uneasy, and once almost every week it was
interrupted by an acute attack of anxiety with hallucinations. The
memory of these dreams was always very distinct. Thus he was able to
relate that the devil had shouted at him: "Now we have you, now we
have you!" and then there was a smell of pitch and brimstone, and
the fire burned his skin. From this dream he woke in terror; at
first he could not cry out; then his voice came back to him, and he
was distinctly heard to say: "No, no, not me; I haven't done
anything," or: "Please, don't; I will never do it again!" At other
times he said: "Albert has never done that!" Later he avoided
undressing, "because the fire attacked him only when he was
undressed." In the midst of these evil dreams, which were
endangering his health, he was sent into the country, where he
recovered in the course of eighteen months. At the age of fifteen he
confessed one day: "Je n'osais pas l'avouer, mais j'eprouvais
continuellement des picotements et des surexcitations aux parties; * a
la fin, cela m'enervait tant que plusieurs fois j'ai pense me jeter
par la fenetre du dortoir." *(2)
-
* The emphasis [on 'parties'] is my own, though the meaning is plain
enough without it.
*(2) I did not dare admit it, but I continually felt tinglings and
overexcitements of the parts; at the end, it wearied me so much that
several times I thought to throw myself from the dormitory window.
-
It is, of course, not difficult to guess: 1. That the boy had
practised masturbation in former years, that he had probably denied
it, and was threatened with severe punishment for his bad habit (His
confession: Je ne le ferai plus; * his denial: Albert n'a jamais
fait ca.) *(2) 2. That, under the advancing pressure of puberty, the
temptation to masturbate was re-awakened through the titillation of
the genitals. 3. That now, however, there arose within him a
struggle for repression, which suppressed the libido and transformed
it into anxiety, and that this anxiety now gathered up the punishments
with which he was originally threatened.
-
* I will not do it again.
*(2) Albert never did that.
-
Let us, on the other hand, see what conclusions were drawn by the
author (p. 69):
"1. It is clear from this observation that the influence of
puberty may produce in a boy of delicate health a condition of extreme
weakness, and that this may lead to a very marked cerebral anaemia. *
-
* The italics ['very marked cerebral anaemia.'] are mine.
-
"2. This cerebral anaemia produces an alteration of character,
demono-maniacal hallucinations, and very violent nocturnal, and
perhaps also diurnal, states of anxiety.
"3. The demonomania and the self-reproaches of the boy can be traced
to the influences of a religious education which had acted upon him as
a child.
"4. All manifestations disappeared as a result of a lengthy
sojourn in the country, bodily exercise, and the return of physical
strength after the termination of puberty.
"5. Possibly an influence predisposing to the development of the
boy's cerebral state may be attributed to heredity and to the father's
former syphilis."
Then finally come the concluding remarks: "Nous avons fait entrer
cette observation dans le cadre delires apyretiques d'inanition, car
c'est a l'ischemie cerebrale que nous rattachons cet etat
particulier." *
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* We put this case in the file of apyretic delirias of inanition,
for it is to cerebral anaemia that we attach this particular state.
E. The Primary and Secondary Processes. Repression
-
In attempting to penetrate more profoundly into the psychology of
the dream-processes, I have undertaken a difficult task, to which,
indeed, my powers of exposition are hardly adequate. To reproduce
the simultaneity of so complicated a scheme in terms of a successive
description, and at the same time to make each part appear free from
all assumptions, goes fairly beyond my powers. I have now to atone for
the fact that in my exposition of the psychology of dreams I have been
unable to follow the historic development of my own insight. The lines
of approach to the comprehension of the dream were laid down for me by
previous investigations into the psychology of the neuroses, to
which I should not refer here, although I am constantly obliged to
do so; whereas I should like to work in the opposite direction,
starting from the dream, and then proceeding to establish its junction
with the psychology of the neuroses. I am conscious of all the
difficulties which this involves for the reader, but I know of no
way to avoid them.
Since I am dissatisfied with this state of affairs, I am glad to
dwell upon another point of view, which would seem to enhance the
value of my efforts. As was shown in the introductory section, I found
myself confronted with a theme which had been marked by the sharpest
contradictions on the part of those who had written on it. In the
course of our treatment of the problems of the dream, room has been
found for most of these contradictory views. We have been compelled to
take decided exception to two only of the views expressed: namely,
that the dream is a meaningless process, and that it is a somatic
process. Apart from these, we have been able to find a place for the
truth of all the contradictory opinions at one point or another of the
complicated tissue of the facts, and we have been able to show that
each expressed something genuine and correct. That our dreams continue
the impulses and interests of waking life has been generally confirmed
by the discovery of the hidden dream-thoughts. These concern
themselves only with things that seem to us important and of great
interest. Dreams never occupy themselves with trifles. But we have
accepted also the opposite view, namely, that the dream gathers up the
indifferent residues of the day, and cannot seize upon any important
interest of the day until it has in some measure withdrawn itself from
waking activity. We have found that this holds true of the
dream-content, which by means of distortion gives the dream-thought an
altered expression. We have said that the dream-process, owing to
the nature of the mechanism of association, finds it easier to
obtain possession of recent or indifferent material, which has not yet
been put under an embargo by our waking mental activity; and that,
on account of the censorship, it transfers the psychic intensity of
the significant but also objectionable material to the indifferent.
The hypermnesia of the dream and its ability to dispose of infantile
material have become the main foundations of our doctrine; in our
theory of dreams we have assigned to a wish of infantile origin the
part of the indispensable motive-power of dream-formation. It has not,
of course, occurred to us to doubt the experimentally demonstrated
significance of external sensory stimuli during sleep; but we have
placed this material in the same relation to the dream-wish as the
thought-residues left over from our waking activity. We need not
dispute the fact that the dream interprets objective sensory stimuli
after the manner of an illusion; but we have supplied the motive for
this interpretation, which has been left indeterminate by other
writers. The interpretation proceeds in such a way that the
perceived object is rendered harmless as a source of disturbance of
sleep, whilst it is made usable for the wish-fulfilment. Though we
do not admit as a special source of dreams the subjective state of
excitation of the sensory organs during sleep (which seems to have
been demonstrated by Trumbull Ladd), we are, nevertheless, able to
explain this state of excitation by the regressive revival of the
memories active behind the dream. As to the internal organic
sensations, which are wont to be taken as the cardinal point of the
explanation of dreams, these, too, find a place in our conception,
though indeed a more modest one. These sensations- the sensations of
falling, of soaring, or of being inhibited- represent an ever-ready
material, which the dream-work can employ to express the dream-thought
as often as need arises.
That the dream-process is a rapid and momentary one is, we
believe, true as regards the perception by consciousness of the
preformed dream-content; but we have found that the preceding portions
of the dream-process probably follow a slow, fluctuating course. As
for the riddle of the superabundant dream-content compressed into
the briefest moment of time, we have been able to contribute the
explanation that the dream seizes upon ready-made formations of the
psychic life. We have found that it is true that dreams are
distorted and mutilated by the memory, but that this fact presents
no difficulties, as it is only the last manifest portion of a
process of distortion which has been going on from the very
beginning of the dream-work. In the embittered controversy, which
has seemed irreconcilable, whether the psychic life is asleep at
night, or can make the same use of all its faculties as during the
day, we have been able to conclude that both sides are right, but that
neither is entirely so. In the dream-thoughts we found evidence of a
highly complicated intellectual activity, operating with almost all
the resources of the psychic apparatus; yet it cannot be denied that
these dream-thoughts have originated during the day, and it is
indispensable to assume that there is a sleeping state of the
psychic life. Thus, even the doctrine of partial sleep received its
due, but we have found the characteristic feature of the sleeping
state not in the disintegration of the psychic system of
connections, but in the special attitude adopted by the psychic system
which is dominant during the day- the attitude of the wish to sleep.
The deflection from the outer world retains its significance for our
view, too; though not the only factor at work, it helps to make
possible the regressive course of the dream-representation. The
abandonment of voluntary guidance of the flow of ideas is
incontestable; but psychic life does not thereby become aimless, for
we have seen that upon relinquishment of the voluntary directing
ideas, involuntary ones take charge. On the other hand, we have not
only recognized the loose associative connection of the dream, but
have brought a far greater area within the scope of this kind of
connection than could have been suspected; we have, however, found
it merely an enforced substitute for another, a correct and
significant type of association. To be sure, we too have called the
dream absurd, but examples have shown us how wise the dream is when it
simulates absurdity. As regards the functions that have been
attributed to the dream, we are able to accept them all. That the
dream relieves the mind, like a safety-valve, and that, as Robert
has put it, all kinds of harmful material are rendered harmless by
representation in the dream, not only coincides exactly with our own
theory of the twofold wish-fulfilment in the dream, but in its very
wording becomes more intelligible for us than it is for Robert
himself. The free indulgence of the psyche in the play of its
faculties is reproduced in our theory as the non-interference of the
preconscious activity with the dream. The return of the embryonal
standpoint of psychic life in the dream, and Havelock Ellis's remark
that the dream is "an archaic world of vast emotions and imperfect
thoughts," appear to us as happy anticipations of our own
exposition, which asserts that primitive modes of operations that
are suppressed during the day play a part in the formation of
dreams. We can fully identify ourselves with Sully's statement, that
"our dreams bring back again our earlier and successively developed
personalities, our old ways of regarding things, with impulses and
modes of reaction which ruled us long ago"; and for us, as for Delage,
the suppressed material becomes the mainspring of the dream.
We have fully accepted the role that Scherner ascribes to the
dream-phantasy, and his own interpretations, but we have been
obliged to transpose them, as it were, to another part of the problem.
It is not the dream that creates the phantasy, but the activity of
unconscious phantasy that plays the leading part in the formation of
the dream-thoughts. We remain indebted to Scherner for directing us to
the source of the dream-thoughts, but almost everything that he
ascribes to the dream-work is attributable to the activity of the
unconscious during the day, which instigates dreams no less than
neurotic symptoms. The dream-work we had to separate from this
activity as something quite different and far more closely controlled.
Finally, we have by no means renounced the relation of the dream to
psychic disturbances, but have given it, on new ground, a more solid
foundation.
Held together by the new features in our theory as by a superior
unity, we find the most varied and most contradictory conclusions of
other writers fitting into our structure; many of them are given a
different turn, but only a few of them are wholly rejected. But our
own structure is still unfinished. For apart from the many obscure
questions in which we have involved ourselves by our advance into
the dark regions of psychology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed
by a new contradiction. On the one hand, we have made it appear that
the dream-thoughts proceed from perfectly normal psychic activities,
but on the other hand we have found among the dream-thoughts a
number of entirely abnormal mental processes, which extend also to the
dream-content, and which we reproduce in the interpretation of the
dream. All that we have termed the dream-work seems to depart so
completely from the psychic processes which we recognize as correct
and appropriate that the severest judgments expressed by the writers
mentioned as to the low level of psychic achievement of dreams must
appear well founded.
Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an
explanation and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for
renewed attention one of the constellations which lead to
dream-formation.
We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number
of thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with
perfect logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have
their own origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we
value in our thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated
performances of a high order, we shall find repeated in the
dream-thoughts. There is, however, no need to assume that this
mental work is performed during sleep; such an assumption would
badly confuse the conception of the psychic state of sleep to which we
have hitherto adhered. On the contrary, these thoughts may very well
have their origin in the daytime, and, unremarked by our
consciousness, may have gone on from their first stimulus until, at
the onset of sleep, they have reached completion. If we are to
conclude anything from this state of affairs, it can only be that it
proves that the most complex mental operations are possible without
the cooperation of consciousness- a truth which we have had to learn
anyhow from every psycho-analysis of a patient suffering from hysteria
or obsessions. These dream-thoughts are certainly not in themselves
incapable of consciousness; if we have not become conscious of them
during the day, this may have been due to various reasons. The act
of becoming conscious depends upon a definite psychic function-
attention- being brought to bear. This seems to be available only in a
determinate quantity, which may have been diverted from the train of
thought in question by other aims. Another way in which such trains of
thought may be withheld from consciousness is the following: From
our conscious reflection we know that, when applying our attention, we
follow a particular course. But if that course leads us to an idea
which cannot withstand criticism, we break off and allow the
cathexis of attention to drop. Now, it would seem that the train of
thought thus started and abandoned may continue to develop without our
attention returning to it, unless at some point it attains a specially
high intensity which compels attention. An initial conscious rejection
by our judgment, on the ground of incorrectness or uselessness for the
immediate purpose of the act of thought, may, therefore, be the
cause of a thought-process going on unnoticed by consciousness until
the onset of sleep.
Let us now recapitulate: We call such a train of thought a
preconscious train, and we believe it to be perfectly correct, and
that it may equally well be a merely neglected train or one that has
been interrupted and suppressed. Let us also state in plain terms
how we visualize the movement of our thought. We believe that a
certain quantity of excitation, which we call cathectic energy, is
displaced from a purposive idea along the association paths selected
by this directing idea. A neglected train of thought has received no
such cathexis, and the cathexis has been withdrawn from one that was
suppressed or rejected; both have thus been left to their own
excitations. The train of thought cathected by some aim becomes able
under certain conditions to attract the attention of consciousness,
and by the mediation of consciousness it then receives hyper-cathexis.
We shall be obliged presently to elucidate our assumptions as to the
nature and function of consciousness.
A train of thought thus incited in the Pcs may either disappear
spontaneously, or it may continue. The former eventuality we
conceive as follows: it diffuses its energy through all the
association paths emanating from it, and throws the entire chain of
thoughts into a state of excitation, which continues for a while,
and then subsides, through the excitation which had called for
discharge being transformed into dormant cathexis. If this first
eventuality occurs, the process has no further significance for
dream-formation. But other directing ideas are lurking in our
preconscious, which have their source in our unconscious and
ever-active wishes. These may gain control of the excitation in the
circle of thoughts thus left to itself, establish a connection between
it and the unconscious wish, and transfer to it the energy inherent in
the unconscious wish. Henceforth the neglected or suppressed train
of thought is in a position to maintain itself, although this
reinforcement gives it no claim to access to consciousness. We may
say, then, that the hitherto preconscious train of thought has been
drawn into the unconscious.
Other constellations leading to dream-formation might be as follows:
The preconscious train of thought might have been connected from the
beginning with the unconscious wish, and for that reason might have
met with rejection by the dominating aim-cathexis. Or an unconscious
wish might become active for other (possibly somatic) reasons, and
of its own accord seek a transference to the psychic residues not
cathected by the Pcs. All three cases have the same result: there is
established in the preconscious a train of thought which, having
been abandoned by the preconscious cathexis, has acquired cathexis
from the unconscious wish.
From this point onward the train of thought is subjected to a series
of transformations which we no longer recognize as normal psychic
processes, and which give a result that we find strange, a
psychopathological formation. Let us now emphasize and bring
together these transformations:
1. The intensities of the individual ideas become capable of
discharge in their entirety, and pass from one idea to another, so
that individual ideas are formed which are endowed with great
intensity. Through the repeated occurrence of this process, the
intensity of an entire train of thought may ultimately be concentrated
in a single conceptual unit. This is the fact of compression or
condensation with which we become acquainted when investigating the
dream-work. It is condensation that is mainly responsible for the
strange impression produced by dreams, for we know of nothing
analogous to it in the normal psychic life that is accessible to
consciousness. We get here, too, ideas which are of great psychic
significance as nodal points or as end-results of whole chains of
thought, but this value is not expressed by any character actually
manifest for our internal perception; what is represented in it is not
in any way made more intensive. In the process of condensation the
whole set of psychic connections becomes transformed into the
intensity of the idea-content. The situation is the same as when, in
the case of a book, I italicize or print in heavy type any word to
which I attach outstanding value for the understanding of the text. In
speech, I should pronounce the same word loudly, and deliberately, and
with emphasis. The first simile points immediately to one of the
examples which were given of the dream-work (trimethylamine in the
dream of Irma's injection). Historians of art call our attention to
the fact that the most ancient sculptures known to history follow a
similar principle, in expressing the rank of the persons represented
by the size of the statues. The king is made two or three times as
tall as his retinue or his vanquished enemies. But a work of art of
the Roman period makes use of more subtle means to accomplish the same
end. The figure of the Emperor is placed in the centre, erect and in
his full height, and special care is bestowed on the modelling of this
figure; his enemies are seen cowering at his feet; but he is no longer
made to seem a giant among dwarfs. At the same time, in the bowing
of the subordinate to his superior, even in our own day, we have an
echo of this ancient principle of representation.
The direction followed by the condensations of the dream is
prescribed on the one hand by the true preconscious relations of the
dream-thoughts, and, on the other hand, by the attraction of the
visual memories in the unconscious. The success of the
condensation-work produces those intensities which are required for
penetration to the perception-system.
2. By the free transference of intensities, and in the service of
the condensation, intermediary ideas- compromises, as it were- are
formed (cf. the numerous examples). This, also, is something unheard
of in the normal movement of our ideas, where what is of most
importance is the selection and the retention of the right
conceptual material. On the other hand, composite and compromise
formations occur with extraordinary frequency when we are trying to
find verbal expression for preconscious thoughts; these are considered
slips of the tongue.
3. The ideas which transfer their intensities to one another are
very loosely connected, and are joined together by such forms of
association as are disdained by our serious thinking, and left to be
exploited solely by wit. In particular, assonances and punning
associations are treated as equal in value to any other associations.
4. Contradictory thoughts do not try to eliminate one another, but
continue side by side, and often combine to form
condensation-products, as though no contradiction existed; or they
form compromises for which we should never forgive our thought, but
which we frequently sanction in our action.
These are some of the most conspicuous abnormal processes to which
the dream-thoughts which have previously been rationally formed are
subjected in the course of the dream-work. As the main feature of
these processes, we may see that the greatest importance is attached
to rendering the cathecting energy mobile and capable of discharge;
the content and the intrinsic significance of the psychic elements
to which these cathexes adhere become matters of secondary importance.
One might perhaps assume that condensation and compromise-formation
are effected only in the service of regression, when the occasion
arises for changing thoughts into images. But the analysis- and
still more plainly the synthesis- of such dreams as show no regression
towards images, e.g., the dream Autodidasker: Conversation with
Professor N, reveals the same processes of displacement and
condensation as do the rest.
We cannot, therefore, avoid the conclusion that two kinds of
essentially different psychic processes participate in
dream-formation; one forms perfectly correct and fitting
dream-thoughts, equivalent to the results of normal thinking, while
the other deals with these thoughts in a most astonishing and, as it
seems, incorrect way. The latter process we have already set apart
in chapter VI as the dream-work proper. What can we say now as to
the derivation of this psychic process?
It would be impossible to answer this question here if we had not
penetrated a considerable way into the psychology of the neuroses, and
especially of hysteria. From this, however, we learn that the same
"incorrect" psychic processes- as well as others not enumerated-
control the production of hysterical symptoms. In hysteria, too, we
find at first a series of perfectly correct and fitting thoughts,
equivalent to our conscious ones, of whose existence in this form we
can, however, learn nothing, i.e., which we can only subsequently
reconstruct. If they have forced their way anywhere to perception,
we discover from the analysis of the symptom formed that these
normal thoughts have been subjected to abnormal treatment, and that by
means of condensation and compromise-formation, through superficial
associations which cover up contradictions, and eventually along the
path of regression, they have been conveyed into the symptom. In
view of the complete identity between the peculiarities of the
dream-work and those of the psychic activity which issues in
psychoneurotic symptoms, we shall feel justified in transferring to
the dream the conclusions urged upon us by hysteria.
From the theory of hysteria we borrow the proposition that such an
abnormal psychic elaboration of a normal train of thought takes
place only when the latter has been used for the transference of an
unconscious wish which dares from the infantile life and is in a state
of repression. Complying with this proposition, we have built up the
theory of the dream on the assumption that the actuating dream-wish
invariably originates in the unconscious; which, as we have
ourselves admitted, cannot be universally demonstrated, even though it
cannot be refuted. But in order to enable us to say just what
repression is, after employing this term so freely, we shall be
obliged to make a further addition to our psychological scaffolding.
We had elaborated the fiction of a primitive psychic apparatus,
the work of which is regulated by the effort to avoid accumulation
of excitation, and as far as possible to maintain itself free from
excitation. For this reason it was constructed after the plan of a
reflex apparatus; motility, in the first place as the path to
changes within the body, was the channel of discharge at its disposal.
We then discussed the psychic results of experiences of gratification,
and were able at this point to introduce a second assumption,
namely, that the accumulation of excitation- by processes that do
not concern us here- is felt as pain, and sets the apparatus in
operation in order to bring about again a state of gratification, in
which the diminution of excitation is perceived as pleasure. Such a
current in the apparatus, issuing from pain and striving for pleasure,
we call a wish. We have said that nothing but a wish is capable of
setting the apparatus in motion and that the course of any
excitation in the apparatus is regulated automatically by the
perception of pleasure and pain. The first occurrence of wishing may
well have taken the form of a hallucinatory cathexis of the memory
of gratification. But this hallucination, unless it could be
maintained to the point of exhaustion, proved incapable of bringing
about a cessation of the need, and consequently of securing the
pleasure connected with gratification.
Thus, there was required a second activity- in our terminology the
activity of a second system- which would not allow the memory-cathexis
to force its way to perception and thence to bind the psychic
forces, but would lead the excitation emanating from the need-stimulus
by a detour, which by means of voluntary motility would ultimately
so change the outer world as to permit the real perception of the
gratifying object. Thus far we have already elaborated the scheme of
the psychic apparatus; these two systems are the germ of what we set
up in the fully developed apparatus as the Ucs and Pcs.
To change the outer world appropriately by means of motility
requires the accumulation of a large total of experiences in the
memory-systems, as well as a manifold consolidation of the relations
which are evoked in this memory-material by various directing ideas.
We will now proceed further with our assumptions. The activity of
the second system, groping in many directions, tentatively sending
forth cathexes and retracting them, needs on the one hand full command
over all memory-material, but on the other hand it would be a
superfluous expenditure of energy were it to send along the individual
thought-paths large quantities of cathexis, which would then flow away
to no purpose and thus diminish the quantity needed for changing the
outer world. Out of a regard for purposiveness, therefore, I postulate
that the second system succeeds in maintaining the greater part of the
energic cathexes in a state of rest, and in using only a small portion
for its operations of displacement. The mechanics of these processes
is entirely unknown to me; anyone who seriously wishes to follow up
these ideas must address himself to the physical analogies, and find
some way of getting a picture of the sequence of motions which
ensues on the excitation of the neurones. Here I do no more than
hold fast to the idea that the activity of the first Psi-system aims
at the free outflow of the quantities of excitation, and that the
second system, by means of the cathexes emanating from it, effects
an inhibition of this outflow, a transformation into dormant cathexis,
probably with a rise of potential. I therefore assume that the
course taken by any excitation under the control of the second
system is bound to quite different mechanical conditions from those
which obtain under the control of the first system. After the second
system has completed its work of experimental thought, it removes
the inhibition and damming up of the excitations and allows them to
flow off into motility.
An interesting train of thought now presents itself if we consider
the relations of this inhibition of discharge by the second system
to the process of regulation by the pain-principle. Let us now seek
out the counterpart of the primary experience of gratification,
namely, the objective experience of fear. Let a perception-stimulus
act on the primitive apparatus and be the source of a pain-excitation.
There will then ensue uncoordinated motor manifestations, which will
go on until one of these withdraws the apparatus from perception,
and at the same time from the pain. On the reappearance of the percept
this manifestation will immediately be repeated (perhaps as a movement
of flight), until the percept has again disappeared. But in this
case no tendency will remain to recathect the perception of the source
of pain by hallucination or otherwise. On the contrary, there will
be a tendency in the primary apparatus to turn away again from this
painful memory-image immediately if it is in any way awakened, since
the overflow of its excitation into perception would, of course, evoke
(or more precisely, begin to evoke) pain. This turning away from a
recollection, which is merely a repetition of the former flight from
perception, is also facilitated by the fact that, unlike the
perception, the recollection has not enough quality to arouse
consciousness, and thereby to attract fresh cathexis. This
effortless and regular turning away of the psychic process from the
memory of anything that had once been painful gives us the prototype
and the first example of psychic repression. We all know how much of
this turning away from the painful, the tactics of the ostrich, may
still be shown as present even in the normal psychic life of adults.
In obedience to the pain-principle, therefore, the first
Psi-system is quite incapable of introducing anything unpleasant
into the thought-nexus. The system cannot do anything but wish. If
this were to remain so, the activity of thought of the second
system, which needs to have at its disposal all the memories stored up
by experience, would be obstructed. But two paths are now open: either
the work of the second system frees itself completely from the
pain-principle, and continues its course, paying no heed to the pain
attached to given memories, or it contrives to cathect the memory of
the pain in such a manner as to preclude the liberation of pain. We
can reject the first possibility, as the pain-principle also proves to
act as a regulator of the cycle of excitation in the second system; we
are therefore thrown back upon the second possibility, namely, that
this system cathects a memory in such a manner as to inhibit any
outflow of excitation from it, and hence, also, the outflow,
comparable to a motor-innervation, needed for the development of pain.
And thus, setting out from two different starting-points, i.e., from
regard for the pain-principle, and from the principle of the least
expenditure of innervation, we are led to the hypothesis that cathexis
through the second system is at the same time an inhibition of the
discharge of excitation. Let us, however, keep a close hold on the
fact- for this is the key to the theory of repression- that the second
system can only cathect an idea when it is in a position to inhibit
any pain emanating from this idea. Anything that withdrew itself
from this inhibition would also remain inaccessible for the second
system, i.e., would immediately be given up by virtue of the
pain-principle. The inhibition of pain, however, need not be complete;
it must be permitted to begin, since this indicates to the second
system the nature of the memory, and possibly its lack of fitness
for the purpose sought by the process of thought.
The psychic process which is alone tolerated by the first system I
shall now call the primary process; and that which results under the
inhibiting action of the second system I shall call the secondary
process. I can also show at another point for what purpose the
second system is obliged to correct the primary process. The primary
process strives for discharge of the excitation in order to
establish with the quantity of excitation thus collected an identity
of perception; the secondary process has abandoned this intention, and
has adopted instead the aim of an identity of thought. All thinking is
merely a detour from the memory of gratification (taken as a purposive
idea) to the identical cathexis of the same memory, which is to be
reached once more by the path of motor experiences. Thought must
concern itself with the connecting-paths between ideas without
allowing itself to be misled by their intensities. But it is obvious
that condensations of ideas and intermediate or
compromise-formations are obstacles to the attainment of the
identity which is aimed at; by substituting one idea for another
they swerve away from the path which would have led onward from the
first idea. Such procedures are, therefore, carefully avoided in our
secondary thinking. It will readily be seen, moreover, that the
pain-principle, although at other times it provides the
thought-process with its most important clues, may also put
difficulties in its way in the pursuit of identity of thought.
Hence, the tendency of the thinking process must always be to free
itself more and more from exclusive regulation by the
pain-principle, and to restrict the development of affect through
the work of thought to the very minimum which remains effective as a
signal. This refinement in functioning is to be achieved by a fresh
hyper-cathexis, effected with the help of consciousness. But we are
aware that this refinement is seldom successful, even in normal
psychic life, and that our thinking always remains liable to
falsification by the intervention of the pain-principle.
This, however, is not the breach in the functional efficiency of our
psychic apparatus which makes it possible for thoughts representing
the result of the secondary thought-work to fall into the power of the
primary psychic process; by which formula we may now describe the
operations resulting in dreams and the symptoms of hysteria. This
inadequacy results from the converging of two factors in our
development, one of which pertains solely to the psychic apparatus,
and has exercised a determining influence on the relation of the two
systems, while the other operates fluctuatingly, and introduces motive
forces of organic origin into the psychic life. Both originate in
the infantile life, and are a precipitate of the alteration which
our psychic and somatic organism has undergone since our infantile
years.
When I termed one of the psychic processes in the psychic
apparatus the primary process, I did so not only in consideration of
its status and function, but was also able to take account of the
temporal relationship actually involved. So far as we know, a
psychic apparatus possessing only the primary process does not
exist, and is to that extent a theoretical fiction but this at least
is a fact: that the primary processes are present in the apparatus
from the beginning, while the secondary processes only take shape
gradually during the course of life, inhibiting and overlaying the
primary, whilst gaining complete control over them perhaps only in the
prime of life. Owing to this belated arrival of the secondary
processes, the essence of our being, consisting of unconscious
wish-impulses, remains something which cannot be grasped or
inhibited by the preconscious; and its part is once and for all
restricted to indicating the most appropriate paths for the
wish-impulses originating in the unconscious. These unconscious wishes
represent for all subsequent psychic strivings a compulsion to which
they Must submit themselves, although they may perhaps endeavour to
divert them and to guide them to superior aims. In consequence of this
retardation, an extensive region of the memory-material remains in
fact inaccessible to preconscious cathexis.
Now among these wish-impulses originating in the infantile life.
indestructible and incapable of inhibition, there are some the
fulfilments of which have come to be in contradiction with the
purposive ideas of our secondary thinking. The fulfilment of these
wishes would no longer produce an affect of pleasure, but one of pain;
and it is just this conversion of affect that constitutes the
essence of what we call repression. In what manner and by what
motive forces such a conversion can take place constitutes the problem
of repression, which we need here only to touch upon in passing. It
will suffice to note the fact that such a conversion of affect
occurs in the course of development (one need only think of the
emergence of disgust, originally absent in infantile life), and that
it is connected with the activity of the secondary system. The
memories from which the unconscious wish evokes a liberation of affect
have never been accessible to the Pcs, and for that reason this
liberation cannot be inhibited. It is precisely on account of this
generation of affect that these ideas are not now accessible even by
way of the preconscious thoughts to which they have transferred the
energy of the wishes connected with them. On the contrary, the
pain-principle comes into play, and causes the Pcs to turn away from
these transference-thoughts. These latter are left to themselves,
are repressed, and thus, the existence of a store of infantile
memories, withdrawn from the beginning from the Pcs, becomes the
preliminary condition of repression.
In the most favourable case, the generation of pain terminates so
soon as the cathexis is withdrawn from the transference-thoughts in
the Pcs, and this result shows that the intervention of the
pain-principle is appropriate. It is otherwise, however, if the
repressed unconscious wish receives an organic reinforcement which
it can put at the service of its transference-thoughts, and by which
it can enable them to attempt to break through with their
excitation, even if the cathexis of the Pcs has been taken away from
them. A defensive struggle then ensues, inasmuch as the Pcs reinforces
the opposite to the repressed thoughts (counter-cathexis), and the
eventual outcome is that the transference-thoughts (the carriers of
the unconscious wish) break through in some form of compromise through
symptom-formation. But from the moment that the repressed thoughts are
powerfully cathected by the unconscious wish-impulse, but forsaken
by the preconscious cathexis, they succumb to the primary psychic
process, and aim only at motor discharge; or, if the way is clear,
at hallucinatory revival of the desired identity of perception. We
have already found, empirically, that the incorrect processes
described are enacted only with thoughts which are in a state of
repression. We are now in a position to grasp yet another part of
the total scheme of the facts. These incorrect Processes are the
primary processes of the psychic apparatus; they occur wherever
ideas abandoned by the preconscious cathexis are left to themselves
and can become filled with the uninhibited energy which flows from the
unconscious and strives for discharge. There are further facts which
go to show that the processes described as incorrect are not really
falsifications of our normal procedure, or defective thinking. but the
modes of operation of the psychic apparatus when freed from
inhibition. Thus we see that the process of the conveyance of the
preconscious excitation to motility occurs in accordance with the same
procedure, and that in the linkage of preconscious ideas with words we
may easily find manifested the same displacements and confusions
(which we ascribe to inattention). Finally, a proof of the increased
work made necessary by the inhibition of these primary modes of
procedure might be found in the fact that we achieve a comical effect,
a surplus to be discharged through laughter, if we allow these modes
of thought to come to consciousness.
The theory of the psychoneuroses asserts with absolute certainty
that it can only be sexual wish-impulses from the infantile life,
which have undergone repression (affect-conversion) during the
developmental period of childhood, which are capable of renewal at
later periods of development (whether as a result of our sexual
constitution, which has, of course, grown out of an original
bi-sexuality, or in consequence of unfavourable influences in our
sexual life); and which therefore supply the motive-power for all
psychoneurotic symptom-formation. It is only by the introduction of
these sexual forces that the gaps still demonstrable in the theory
of repression can be filled. Here, I will leave it undecided whether
the postulate of the sexual and infantile holds good for the theory of
dreams as well; I am not completing the latter, because in assuming
that the dream-wish invariably originates in the unconscious I have
already gone a step beyond the demonstrable. * Nor will I inquire
further into the nature of the difference between the play of
psychic forces in dream-formation and in the formation of hysterical
symptoms, since there is missing here the needed fuller knowledge of
one of the two things to be compared. But there is another point which
I regard as important, and I will confess at once that it was only
on account of this point that I entered upon all the discussions
concerning the two psychic systems, their modes of operation, and
the fact of repression. It does not greatly matter whether I have
conceived the psychological relations at issue with approximate
correctness, or, as is easily possible in such a difficult matter,
wrongly and imperfectly. However our views may change about the
interpretation of the psychic censorship or the correct and the
abnormal elaboration of the dream-content. it remains certain that
such processes are active in dream-formation, and that in their
essentials they reveal the closest analogy with the processes observed
in the formation of hysterical symptoms. Now the dream is not a
pathological phenomenon; it does not presuppose any disturbance of our
psychic equilibrium; and it does not leave behind it any weakening
of our efficiency or capacities. The objection that no conclusions can
be drawn about the dreams of healthy persons from my own dreams and
from those of my neurotic patients may be rejected without comment.
If, then, from the nature of the given phenomena we infer the nature
of their motive forces, we find that the psychic mechanism utilized by
the neuroses is not newly-created by a morbid disturbance that lays
hold of the psychic life, but lies in readiness in the normal
structure of our psychic apparatus. The two psychic systems, the
frontier-censorship between them, the inhibition and overlaying of the
one activity by the other, the relations of both to consciousness-
or whatever may take place of these concepts on a juster
interpretation of the actual relations- all these belong to the normal
structure of our psychic instrument, and the dream shows us one of the
paths which lead to a knowledge of this structure. If we wish to be
content with a minimum of perfectly assured additions to our
knowledge, we shall say that the dream affords proof that the
suppressed material continues to exist even in the normal person and
remains capable of psychic activity. Dreams are one of the
manifestations of this suppressed material; theoretically, this is
true in all cases; and in tangible experience, it has been found
true in at least a great number of cases, which happen to display most
plainly the more striking features of the dream-life. The suppressed
psychic material, which in the waking state has been prevented from
expression and cut off from internal perception by the mutual
neutralization of contradictory attitudes, finds ways and means, under
the sway of compromise-formations, of obtruding itself on
consciousness during the night.
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Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo. *(2)
-
At any rate, the interpretation of dreams is the via regia to a
knowledge of the unconscious element in our psychic life.
-
* Here, as elsewhere, there are gaps in the treatment of the
subject, which I have deliberately left, because to fill them up
would, on the one hand, require excessive labour, and, on the other
hand, I should have to depend on material which is foreign to the
dream. Thus, for example, I have avoided stating whether I give the
word suppressed a different meaning from that of the word repressed.
No doubt, however, it will have become clear that the latter
emphasizes more than the former the relation to the unconscious. I
have not gone into the problem, which obviously arises, of why the
dream-thoughts undergo distortion by the censorship even when they
abandon the progressive path to consciousness, and choose the path
of regression. And so with other similar omissions. I have, above all,
sought to give some idea of the problems to which the further
dissection of the dream-work leads, and to indicate the other themes
with which these are connected. It was, however, not always easy to
decide just where the pursuit should be discontinued. That I have
not treated exhaustively the part which the psycho-sexual life plays
in the dream, and have avoided the interpretation of dreams of an
obviously sexual content, is due to a special reason- which may not
perhaps be that which the reader would expect. It is absolutely
alien to my views and my neuropathological doctrines to regard the
sexual life as a pudendum with which neither the physician nor the
scientific investigator should concern himself. To me, the moral
indignation which prompted the translator of Artemidorus of Daldis
to keep from the reader's knowledge the chapter on sexual dreams
contained in the Symbolism of Dreams is merely ludicrous. For my own
part, what decided my procedure was solely the knowledge that in the
explanation of sexual dreams I should be bound to get deeply
involved in the still unexplained problems of perversion and
bisexuality; it was for this reason that I reserved this material
for treatment elsewhere.
*(2) If I cannot influence the gods, I will stir up Acheron.
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By the analysis of dreams we obtain some insight into the
composition of this most marvellous and most mysterious of
instruments; it is true that this only takes us a little way, but it
gives us a start which enables us, setting out from the angle of other
(properly pathological) formations, to penetrate further in our
disjoining of the instrument. For disease- at all events that which is
rightly called functional- does not necessarily presuppose the
destruction of this apparatus, or the establishment of new cleavages
in its interior: it can be explained dynamically by the
strengthening and weakening of the components of the play of forces,
so many of the activities of which are covered up in normal
functioning. It might be shown elsewhere how the fact that the
apparatus is a combination of two instances also permits of a
refinement of its normal functioning which would have been
impossible to a single system. *
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* The dream is not the only phenomenon that permits us to base our
psycho-pathology on psychology. In a short unfinished series of
articles in the Monatsschrift fur Psychiatrie und Neurologie ("uber
den psychischen Mechanismus der Vergesslichkeit," 1898, and "uber
Deckerinnerungen," 1899) I attempted to interpret a number of
psychic manifestations from everyday life in support of the same
conception. (These and other articles on "Forgetting," "Lapses of
Speech," etc., have now been published in the Psycho-pathology of
Everyday Life.)
F. The Unconscious and Consciousness. Reality.
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If we look more closely, we may observe that the psychological
considerations examined in the foregoing chapter require us to assume,
not the existence of two systems near the motor end of the psychic
apparatus, but two kinds of processes or courses taken by
excitation. But this does not disturb us; for we must always be
ready to drop our auxiliary ideas, when we think we are in a
position to replace them by something which comes closer to the
unknown reality. Let us now try to correct certain views which may
have taken a misconceived form as long as we regarded the two systems,
in the crudest and most obvious sense, as two localities within the
psychic apparatus- views which have left a precipitate in the terms
repression and penetration. Thus, when we say that an unconscious
thought strives for translation into the preconscious in order
subsequently to penetrate through to consciousness, we do not mean
that a second idea has to be formed, in a new locality, like a
paraphrase, as it were, whilst the original persists by its side;
and similarly, when we speak of penetration into consciousness, we
wish carefully to detach from this notion any idea of a change of
locality. When we say that a preconscious idea is repressed and
subsequently absorbed by the unconscious, we might be tempted by these
images, borrowed from the idea of a struggle for a particular
territory, to assume that an arrangement is really broken up in the
one psychic locality and replaced by a new one in the other
locality. For these comparisons we will substitute a description which
would seem to correspond more closely to the real state of affairs; we
will say that an energic cathexis is shifted to or withdrawn from a
certain arrangement, so that the psychic formation falls under the
domination of a given instance or is withdrawn from it. Here again
we replace a topographical mode of representation by a dynamic one; it
is not the psychic formation that appears to us as the mobile element,
but its innervation. *
-
* This conception underwent elaboration and modification when it was
recognized that the essential character of a preconscious idea was its
connection with the residues of verbal ideas. See The Unconscious,
p. 428 below.
-
Nevertheless, I think it expedient and justifiable to continue to
use the illustrative idea of the two systems. We shall avoid any abuse
of this mode of representation if we remember that ideas, thoughts,
and psychic formations in general must not in any case be localized in
organic elements of the nervous system but, so to speak, between them,
where resistances and association-tracks form the correlate
corresponding to them. Everything that can become an object of
internal perception is virtual, like the image in the telescope
produced by the crossing of light-rays. But we are justified in
thinking of the systems- which have nothing psychic in themselves, and
which never become accessible to our psychic perception- as
something similar to the lenses of the telescope, which project the
image. If we continue this comparison, we might say that the
censorship between the two systems corresponds to the refraction of
rays on passing into a new medium.
Thus far, we have developed our psychology on our own
responsibility; it is now time to turn and look at the doctrines
prevailing in modern psychology, and to examine the relation of
these to our theories. The problem of the unconscious in psychology
is, according to the forcible statement of Lipps, * less a
psychological problem than the problem of psychology. As long as
psychology disposed of this problem by the verbal explanation that the
psychic is the conscious, and that unconscious psychic occurrences are
an obvious contradiction, there was no possibility of a physician's
observations of abnormal mental states being turned to any
psychological account. The physician and the philosopher can meet only
when both acknowledge that unconscious psychic processes is the
appropriate and justified expression for all established fact. The
physician cannot but reject, with a shrug of his shoulders, the
assertion that consciousness is the indispensable quality of the
psychic; if his respect for the utterances of the philosophers is
still great enough, he may perhaps assume that he and they do not deal
with the same thing and do not pursue the same science. For a single
intelligent observation of the psychic life of a neurotic, a single
analysis of a dream, must force upon him the unshakable conviction
that the most complicated and the most accurate operations of thought,
to which the name of psychic occurrences can surely not be refused,
may take place without arousing consciousness. *(2) The physician,
it is true, does not learn of these unconscious processes until they
have produced an effect on consciousness which admits of communication
or observation. But this effect on consciousness may show a psychic
character which differs completely from the unconscious process, so
that internal perception cannot possibly recognize in the first a
substitute for the second. The physician must reserve himself the
right to penetrate, by a Process of deduction, from the effect on
consciousness to the unconscious psychic process; he learns in this
way that the effect on consciousness is only a remote psychic
product of the unconscious process, and that the latter has not become
conscious as such, and has, moreover, existed and operated without
in any way betraying itself to consciousness.
-
* Der Begriff des Unbewussten in der Psychologie. Lecture
delivered at the Third International Psychological Congress at Munich,
1897.
*(2) I am happy to be able to point to an author who has drawn
from the study of dreams the same conclusion as regards the relation
between consciousness and the unconscious.
Du Prel says: "The problem: what is the psyche, manifestly
requires a preliminary examination as to whether consciousness and
psyche are identical. But it is just this preliminary question which
is answered in the negative by the dream, which shows that the concept
of the psyche extends beyond that of consciousness, much as the
gravitational force of a star extends beyond its sphere of luminosity"
(Philos. d. Mystik, p. 47).
"It is a truth which cannot be sufficiently emphasized that the
concepts of consciousness and of the psyche are not co-extensive"
(p. 306).
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A return from the over-estimation of the property of consciousness
is the indispensable preliminary to any genuine insight into the
course of psychic events. As Lipps has said, the unconscious must be
accepted as the general basis of the psychic life. The unconscious
is the larger circle which includes the smaller circle of the
conscious; everything conscious has a preliminary unconscious stage,
whereas the unconscious can stop at this stage, and yet claim to be
considered a full psychic function. The unconscious is the true
psychic reality; in its inner nature it is just as much unknown to
us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly
communicated to us by the data of consciousness as is the external
world by the reports of our sense-organs.
We get rid of a series of dream-problems which have claimed much
attention from earlier writers on the subject when the old
antithesis between conscious life and dream-life is discarded, and the
unconscious psychic assigned to its proper place. Thus, many of the
achievements which are a matter for wonder in a dream are now no
longer to be attributed to dreaming, but to unconscious thinking,
which is active also during the day. If the dream seems to make play
with a symbolical representation of the body, as Scherner has said, we
know that this is the work of certain unconscious phantasies, which
are probably under the sway of sexual impulses and find expression not
only in dreams, but also in hysterical phobias and other symptoms.
If the dream continues and completes mental work begun during the day,
and even brings valuable new ideas to light, we have only to strip off
the dream-disguise from this, as the contribution of the dream-work,
and a mark of the assistance of dark powers in the depths of the
psyche (cf. the devil in Tartini's sonata-dream). The intellectual
achievement as such belongs to the same psychic forces as are
responsible for all such achievements during the day. We are
probably much too inclined to over-estimate the conscious character
even of intellectual and artistic production. From the reports of
certain writers who have been highly productive, such as Goethe and
Helmholtz, we learn, rather, that the most essential and original part
of their creations came to them in the form of inspirations, and
offered itself to their awareness in an almost completed state. In
other cases, where there is a concerted effort of all the psychic
forces, there is nothing strange in the fact that conscious
activity, too, lends its aid. But it is the much-abused privilege of
conscious activity to hide from us all other activities wherever it
participates.
It hardly seems worth while to take up the historical significance
of dreams as a separate theme. Where, for instance, a leader has
been impelled by a dream to engage in a bold undertaking, the
success of which has had the effect of changing history, a new problem
arises only so long as the dream is regarded as a mysterious power and
contrasted with other more familiar psychic forces. The problem
disappears as soon as we regard the dream as a form of expression
for impulses to which a resistance was attached during the day, whilst
at night they were able to draw reinforcement from deep-lying
sources of excitation. * But the great respect with which the
ancient peoples regarded dreams is based on a just piece of
psychological divination. It is a homage paid to the unsubdued and
indestructible element in the human soul, to the demonic power which
furnishes the dream-wish, and which we have found again in our
unconscious.
-
* Cf. (chapter II.), the dream (Sa-Turos) of Alexander the Great
at the siege of Tyre.
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It is not without purpose that I use the expression in our
unconscious, for what we so call does not coincide with the
unconscious of the philosophers, nor with the unconscious of Lipps. As
they use the term, it merely means the opposite of the conscious. That
there exist not only conscious but also unconscious psychic
processes is the opinion at issue, which is so hotly contested and
so energetically defended. Lipps enunciates the more comprehensive
doctrine that everything psychic exists as unconscious, but that
some of it may exist also as conscious. But it is not to prove this
doctrine that we have adduced the phenomena of dreams and hysterical
symptom-formation; the observation of normal life alone suffices to
establish its correctness beyond a doubt. The novel fact that we
have learned from the analysis of psycho-pathological formations,
and indeed from the first member of the group, from dreams, is that
the unconscious- and hence all that is psychic- occurs as a function
of two separate systems, and that as such it occurs even in normal
psychic life. There are consequently two kinds of unconscious, which
have not as yet been distinguished by psychologists. Both are
unconscious in the psychological sense; but in our sense the first,
which we call Ucs, is likewise incapable of consciousness; whereas the
second we call Pcs because its excitations, after the observance of
certain rules, are capable of reaching consciousness; perhaps not
before they have again undergone censorship, but nevertheless
regardless of the Ucs system. The fact that in order to attain
consciousness the excitations must pass through an unalterable series,
a succession of instances, as is betrayed by the changes produced in
them by the censorship, has enabled us to describe them by analogy
in spatial terms. We described the relations of the two systems to
each other and to consciousness by saying that the system Pcs is
like a screen between the system Ucs and consciousness. The system Pcs
not only bars access to consciousness, but also controls the access to
voluntary motility, and has control of the emission of a mobile
cathectic energy, a portion of which is familiar to us as attention. *
-
* Cf. here my remarks in the Proceedings of the Society for
Psychical Research, vol. xxvi, in which the descriptive, dynamic and
systematic meanings of the ambiguous word Unconscious are
distinguished from one another.
-
We must also steer clear of the distinction between the
super-conscious and the subconscious, which has found such favour in
the more recent literature on the psychoneuroses, for just such a
distinction seems to emphasize the equivalence of what is psychic
and what is conscious.
What role is now left, in our representation of things, to the
phenomenon of consciousness, once so all-powerful and over-shadowing
all else? None other than that of a sense-organ for the perception
of psychic qualities. According to the fundamental idea of our
schematic attempt we can regard conscious perception only as the
function proper to a special system for which the abbreviated
designation Cs commends itself. This system we conceive to be
similar in its mechanical characteristics to the perception-system
P, and hence excitable by qualities, and incapable of retaining the
trace of changes: i.e., devoid of memory. The psychic apparatus which,
with the sense-organ of the P-systems, is turned to the outer world,
is itself the outer world for the sense-organ of Cs, whose
teleological justification depends on this relationship. We are here
once more confronted with the principle of the succession of instances
which seems to dominate the structure of the apparatus. The material
of excitation flows to the sense-organ Cs from two sides: first from
the P-system, whose excitation, qualitatively conditioned, probably
undergoes a new elaboration until it attains conscious perception;
and, secondly, from the interior of the apparatus itself, whose
quantitative processes are perceived as a qualitative series of
pleasures and pains once they have reached consciousness after
undergoing certain changes.
The philosophers, who became aware that accurate and highly
complicated thought-structures are possible even without the
co-operation of consciousness, thus found it difficult to ascribe
any function to consciousness; it appeared to them a superfluous
mirroring of the completed psychic process. The analogy of our Cs
system with the perception-systems relieves us of this
embarrassment. We see that perception through our sense-organs results
in directing an attention-cathexis to the paths along which the
incoming sensory excitation diffuses itself; the qualitative
excitation of the P-system serves the mobile quantity in the psychic
apparatus as a regulator of its discharge. We may claim the same
function for the overlying sense-organ of the Cs system. By perceiving
new qualities, it furnishes a new contribution for the guidance and
suitable distribution of the mobile cathexis-quantities. By means of
perceptions of pleasure and pain, it influences the course of the
cathexes within the psychic apparatus, which otherwise operates
unconsciously and by the displacement of quantities. It is probable
that the pain-principle first of all regulates the displacements of
cathexis automatically, but it is quite possible that consciousness
contributes a second and more subtle regulation of these qualities,
which may even oppose the first, and perfect the functional capacity
of the apparatus, by placing it in a position contrary to its original
design, subjecting even that which induces pain to cathexis and to
elaboration. We learn from neuro-psychology that an important part
in the functional activity of the apparatus is ascribed to these
regulations by the qualitative excitations of the sense-organs. The
automatic rule of the primary pain-principle, together with the
limitation of functional capacity bound up with it, is broken by the
sensory regulations, which are themselves again automatisms. We find
that repression, which, though originally expedient, nevertheless
finally brings about a harmful lack of inhibition and of psychic
control, overtakes memories much more easily than it does perceptions,
because in the former there is no additional cathexis from the
excitation of the psychic sense-organs. Whilst an idea which is to
be warded off may fail to become conscious because it has succumbed to
repression, it may on other occasions come to be repressed simply
because it has been withdrawn from conscious perception on other
grounds. These are clues which we make use of in therapy in order to
undo accomplished repressions.
The value of the hyper-cathexis which is produced by the
regulating influence of the Cs sense-organs on the mobile quantity
is demonstrated in a teleological context by nothing more clearly than
by the creation of a new series of qualities, and consequently a new
regulation, which constitutes the prerogative of man over animals. For
the mental processes are in themselves unqualitative except for the
excitations of pleasure and pain which accompany them: which, as we
know, must be kept within limits as possible disturbers of thought. In
order to endow them with quality, they are associated in man with
verbal memories, the qualitative residues of which suffice to draw
upon them the attention of consciousness, which in turn endows thought
with a new mobile cathexis.
It is only on a dissection of hysterical mental processes that the
manifold nature of the problems of consciousness becomes apparent. One
then receives the impression that the transition from the preconscious
to the conscious cathexis is associated with a censorship similar to
that between Ucs and Pcs. This censorship, too, begins to act only
when a certain quantitative limit is reached, so that
thought-formations which are not very intense escape it. All
possible cases of detention from consciousness and of penetration into
consciousness under certain restrictions are included within the range
of psychoneurotic phenomena; all point to the intimate and twofold
connection between the censorship and consciousness. I shall
conclude these psychological considerations with the record of two
such occurrences.
On the occasion of a consultation a few years ago, the patient was
an intelligent-looking girl with a simple, unaffected manner. She
was strangely attired; for whereas a woman's dress is usually
carefully thought out to the last pleat, one of her stockings was
hanging down and two of the buttons of her blouse were undone. She
complained of pains in one of her legs, and exposed her calf without
being asked to do so. Her chief complaint, however, was as follows:
She had a feeling in her body as though something were sticking into
it which moved to and fro and shook her through and through. This
sometimes seemed to make her whole body stiff. On hearing this, my
colleague in consultation looked at me: the trouble was quite
obvious to him. To both of us it seemed peculiar that this suggested
nothing to the patient's mother, though she herself must repeatedly
have been in the situation described by her child. As for the girl,
she had no idea of the import of her words, or she would never have
allowed them to pass her lips. Here the censorship had been hoodwinked
so successfully that under the mask of an innocent complaint a
phantasy was admitted to consciousness which otherwise would have
remained in the preconscious.
Another example: I began the psycho-analytic treatment of a boy
fourteen who was suffering from tic convulsif, hysterical vomiting,
headache, etc., by assuring him that after closing his eyes he would
see pictures or that ideas would occur to him, which he was to
communicate to me. He replied by describing pictures. The last
impression he had received before coming to me was revived visually in
his memory. He had been playing a game of checkers with his uncle, and
now he saw the checkerboard before him. He commented on various
positions that were favourable or unfavourable, on moves that were not
safe to make. He then saw a dagger lying on the checker-board- an
object belonging to his father, but which his phantasy laid on the
checker-board. Then a sickle was lying on the board; a scythe was
added; and finally, he saw the image of an old peasant mowing the
grass in front of his father's house far away. A few days later I
discovered the meaning of this series of pictures. Disagreeable family
circumstances had made the boy excited and nervous. Here was a case of
a harsh, irascible father, who had lived unhappily with the boy's
mother, and whose educational methods consisted of threats; he had
divorced his gentle and delicate wife, and remarried; one day he
brought home a young woman as the boy's new mother. The illness of the
fourteen-year-old boy developed a few days later. It was the
suppressed rage against his father that had combined these images into
intelligible allusions. The material was furnished by a mythological
reminiscence. The sickle was that with which Zeus castrated his
father; the scythe and the image of the peasant represented Kronos,
the violent old man who devours his children, and upon whom Zeus
wreaks his vengeance in so unfilial a manner. The father's marriage
gave the boy an opportunity of returning the reproaches and threats
which the child had once heard his father utter because he played with
his genitals (the draught-board; the prohibited moves; the dagger with
which one could kill). We have here long-impressed memories and
their unconscious derivatives which, under the guise of meaningless
pictures, have slipped into consciousness by the devious paths
opened to them.
If I were asked what is the theoretical value of the study of
dreams, I should reply that it lies in the additions to
psychological knowledge and the beginnings of an understanding of
the neuroses which we thereby obtain. Who can foresee the importance a
thorough knowledge of the structure and functions of the psychic
apparatus may attain, when even our present state of knowledge permits
of successful therapeutic intervention in the curable forms of
psychoneuroses? But, it may be asked, what of the practical value of
this study in regard to a knowledge of the psyche and discovery of the
hidden peculiarities of individual character? Have not the unconscious
impulses revealed by dreams the value of real forces in the psychic
life? Is the ethical significance of the suppressed wishes to be
lightly disregarded, since, just as they now create dreams, they may
some day create other things?
I do not feel justified in answering these questions. I have not
followed up this aspect of the problem of dreams. In any case,
however, I believe that the Roman Emperor was in the wrong in ordering
one of his subjects to be executed because the latter had dreamt
that he had killed the Emperor. He should first of all have
endeavoured to discover the significance of the man's dreams; most
probably it was not what it seemed to be. And even if a dream of a
different content had actually had this treasonable meaning, it
would still have been well to recall the words of Plato- that the
virtuous man contents himself with dreaming of that which the wicked
man does in actual life. I am therefore of the opinion that dreams
should be acquitted of evil. Whether any reality is to be attributed
to the unconscious wishes, I cannot say. Reality must, of course, be
denied to all transitory and intermediate thoughts. If we had before
us the unconscious wishes, brought to their final and truest
expression, we should still do well to remember that psychic reality
is a special form of existence which must not be confounded with
material reality. It seems, therefore, unnecessary that people
should refuse to accept the responsibility for the immorality of their
dreams. With an appreciation of the mode of functioning of the psychic
apparatus, and an insight into the relations between conscious and
unconscious, all that is ethically offensive in our dream-life and the
life of phantasy for the most part disappears.
"What a dream has told us of our relations to the present
(reality) we will then seek also in our consciousness and we must
not be surprised if we discover that the monster we saw under the
magnifying-glass of the analysis is a tiny little infusorian" (H.
Sachs).
For all practical purposes in judging human character, a man's
actions and conscious expressions of thought are in most cases
sufficient. Actions, above all, deserve to be placed in the front
rank; for many impulses which penetrate into consciousness are
neutralized by real forces in the psychic life before they find
issue in action; indeed, the reason why they frequently do not
encounter any psychic obstacle on their path is because the
unconscious is certain of their meeting with resistances later. In any
case, it is highly instructive to learn something of the intensively
tilled soil from which our virtues proudly emerge. For the
complexity of human character, dynamically moved in all directions,
very rarely accommodates itself to the arbitrament of a simple
alternative, as our antiquated moral philosophy would have it.
And what of the value of dreams in regard to our knowledge of the
future? That, of course, is quite out of the question. One would
like to substitute the words: in regard to our knowledge of the
past. For in every sense a dream has its origin in the past. The
ancient belief that dreams reveal the future is not indeed entirely
devoid of the truth. By representing a wish as fulfilled the dream
certainly leads us into the future; but this future, which the dreamer
accepts as his present, has been shaped in the likeness of the past by
the indestructible wish.
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"On Freud's Theory of Dreams," Americ. Med., Burlington. New York,
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"Dream and Neurosis," Interstate Med. Journ., 1915.
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GREGORY, J. C., "Dreams as a By-product of Waking Activity,"
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"Ein Fall von Symbolik fur Unglaubige," Zentralbl. f. Ps.-A., I,
1910-1911, p. 235.
"Beitrage zur Sexualsymbolik des Traumes," Ibid., p. 561.
"Weitere Mitt. von Kindheitstraumen mit spez. Bedeutung," Intern.
Ztschr. fur arztl. Ps.-A., I, 1913, p. 476.
"Goethe als Vatersymbol in Traumen," Ibid., No. 6.
"Uber Traume Gottfried Kellers," Internat. Zeitschr. f. Ps.-A.,
II, p. 41.
"Weitere Mitteilung von Kindheitstraumen mit spezieller
Bedeutung," Internat. Zeitschr. f. Ps.-A., II, p. 31.
"Uber eine im Traum angekundigte Reminiszenz an ein sexuelles
Jugenderlebnis," Internat. Zeitschr. f. Ps.-A., V, p. 205.
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HUG-HELLMUTH, H. v., "Analyse eines Traumes eines 5 1/2 jahrigen
Knaben," Zentralbl. f. Ps.-A., II, 1911-1912, pp. 122-127.
"Kindertraume," Internat. Zeitschr. f. arztl. Ps.-A., I, 1913, p.
470.
Aus dem Seelenleben des Kindes. Schr. z. angew. Seelenk, ed.
Freud, No. 15, Vienna and Leipzig, 1913.
"Ein Traum, der sich selber deutet," Internat. Zeitschr. f.
Ps.-A., III, p. 33.
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JONES, ERNEST, "On the Nightmare," American Journ. of Insanity,
January, 1910.
"The Oedipus-Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet's Mystery: A
Study in Motive," American Journ. of Psychology, January, 1910, pp.
72-113.
"Freud's Theory of Dreams," American Journ. of Psychology, April,
1910.
"Remarks on Dr. M. Prince's Article: 'The Mechanism and Interpr.
of Dreams'," Journ. of Abn. Psychol., 1910-1911, pp. 328-336.
"Some Instances of the Influence of Dreams on Waking Life," Journ.
of Abn. Psychol., April-May, 1911.
"The Relationship between Dreams and Psychoneurotic Symptoms,"
American Journ. of Insanity, Vol. 68, No. I, July, 1911.
"A Forgotten Dream," Journ. of Abn. Psychol., April-May, 1912.
Papers on Psycho-Analysis, London, 1912.
Der Alptraum in seiner Beziehung zu gewissen Formen des
mittelalterl. Aberglaubens. Schriften zur angew. Seelenk, ed. Freud,
No. 14, Leipzig and Vienna, 1912.
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JUNG, C. G., "L'analyse des reves," L'annee Psychologique, Vol.
XV. Assoziation, Traum and hysterisches Symptom. Diagnostische
Assoziationsstudien. Beitrage zur experimentellen Psychopathologie,
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"Ein Beitrag zur Psychologie des Geruchtes," Zentralbl. fur
Psychoanalyse., I, 1910, No. 3.
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JUNG, C. G., "Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis des Zahlentraumes," ibid.
1910-1911, pp. 567-572.
"Morton Prince's: 'The Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams,' Eine
kritische Besprechung," Jahrb. f. Ps.-A. u. psychopathol. Forsch.,
III, 1911.
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IWAYA, S., "Traumdeutung in Japan," Ostasien, 1902, p. 302.
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KARPINSKA, L., "Ein Beitrag zur Analyse sinnloser Worte im
Traume," Internat. Zeitschr, f. Ps.-A., III, p. 164.
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KAZODOWSKY, A., "Zusammenhang von Traumen und Wahnvorstellungen,"
Neurolog. Cbl., 1901, pp. 440-447, 508-514.
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72, July-December, 1911, pp. 491-522.
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KRAEPELIN, E., "Uber Sprachstorungen im Traume," Psychol.
Arbeiten, 5, Leipzig, 1907.
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LAUER, CH., "Das Wesen des Traumes in der Beurteilung der
talmudischen und rabbinischen Literature" Intern. Ztschr. f. arztl.
Ps.-A., I, 1913, No. 5.
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LEHMANN, Aberglaube und Zauberei von den altesten Zeiten bis in
die Gegenwart. Deutsch von Petersen. (2nd enlarged edition.)
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LEROY, B., "A propos de quelques reves symboliques," Journ. de
psychol. Norm. et pathol, 5, 1908, pp. 358-365.
AND TOBOWOLSKA, J., "Mecanisme intellectuel du reve," Rev.
philos., 1901, I, Vol. 51, pp. 570-593.
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LOWINGER, Der Traum in der judischen Literatur, Leipzig, 1908.
Mitteilungen zur jud. Volkskunde, 10. Jahrg., Nos. 1 and 2.
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MAEDER, ALPHONSE, "Essai d'interpretation de quelques reves,"
Archives de Psychol., Vol. VI, No. 24, April, 1907.
"Die Symbolik in den Legenden, Marchen, Gebrauchen und Traumen,"
Psychiatrisch-Neurolog. Wochenschr., X. Jahrg., 1908.
"Zur Entstehung der Symbolik im Traum, in der Dementia praecox,
etc." Zentralblatt f. Ps.-A., I, 1910-1911, pp. 383-389.
"Uber die Funktion des Traumes," Jahrb. f. psychoanalyt. Forsch.,
IV, 1912.
"Uber das Traumproblem", Ibid., V, 1913, p. 647.
"Zur Frage der teleologischen Traumfunktion," Ibid., p. 453.
-
MARCINOWSKI, J., "Gezeichnete Traume," Zentralbl. f. Ps.-A., II,
1911-1912, pp. 490-518.
"Drei Romane in Zahlen," Ibid., pp. 619-638.
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MITCHELL, A., About Dreaming, Laughing and Blushing, London, 1905.
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MIURA, K., "Japanische Traumdeuterei," Mitt. d. deutsch, Ges. f.
Natur- u, Volkerk Ostasiens, X, pp. 291-306.
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NACKE, P., "Uber sexuelle Traume," H. Gross' Archiv., 1903, p. 307.
"Der Traum als feinstes Reagans f. d. Akt d. sexuellen
Empfindens," Monatsschrift f. Krim.-Psychol., 1905.
"Kontrasttraume und spez. sexuelle Kontrasttraume," H. Gross'
Archiv., Vol. 24, 1907, pp. 1-19.
"Beitrage zu den sexuellen Traumen," H. Gross' Archiv., 29, pp.
363 ff.
"Die diagnostische und prognostische Brauchbarkeit der sex. Traume,"
Arztl. Sachv.-Ztg., 1911, No. 2.
-
NEGELEIN, J. V., Der Traumschlussel des Yaggaddeva, Giessen, 1912.
(Relig. Gesch. Vers., XI, 4.)
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PACHANTONI, D., "Der Traum als Ursprung von Wahnideen bei
Alkoholdeliranten," Zentralbl. f. Nervenheilk., 32. Jahrg., 1909, p.
796.
-
PEAR, T. H., "The Analysis of Some Personal Dreams, with Special
Reference to Freud's Interpretation; Meeting at the British Assoc. for
the advancement of science, Birmingham, 16-17 September, 1913,"
British Journ. of. Psychol., VI, 3-4, February, 1914.
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POTZL, OTTO, "Experimentell erregte Traumbilder in ihren Beziehungen
zum indirekten Sehen," Zeitschr. f. d. ges. Neurol. u. Psych., Vol.
37, 1917.
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PFISTER, OSKAR, "Wahnvorstellung und Schulerselbstmord. Auf Grund
einer Traumanalyse beleuchtet," Schweiz. Blatter fur
Schulgesundheitspflege, 1909, No. I.
"Kryptolalie, Krytographie und unbewusstes Vexierbild bei Normalen,"
Jahrb. f. Ps.-A. Forschg., V, I, 1913.
-
PRINCE, MORTON, "The Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams," Journ.
of Abn. Psychol., October-November, 1910.
"The Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams; a reply to Dr.
Jones," Journ. of Abn. Psychol., 1910-1911, pp. 337-353.
-
PUTNAM, J. J., "Aus der Analyse zweier Treppen-Traume," Zentralbl.
f. Ps.-A., II, 1911-1912, p. 264.
"Ein charakteristischer Kindertraum," Ibid., p. 328.
"Dream-interpretation and the theory of Psycho-analysis," Journ,
of Abn. Psychol., IX, No. I, p. 36.
-
RAALTE, F. VAN, "Kinderdroomen," Het Kind, 1912. January.
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RANK, OTTO, Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden. Schr. z. angew.
Seelenkunde, No. 5, Vienna and Leipzig, 1909.
"Beispiel eines verkappten Odipus-Traumes," Zentralblatt fur
Psychoanalyse, I, 1910.
"Zum Thema der Zahnreiztraume," Ibid.
"Das Verlieren als Symptomhandlung, zugleich ein Beitrag zum
Verstandnis der Beziehungen des Traumlebens zu den Fehlleistungen
des Alltagslebens," Ibid.
"Ein Traum, der sich selbst deutet," Jahrbuch fur psychoanalyt.
und psychopathol. Forschungen, Vol. II, 1910.
"Ein Beitrag zum Narzissmus," Ibid., Vol. III, 1911.
"Fehlleistung und Traum," Zentralbl. f. Ps.-A., II, 1911-1912, p.
266.
"Aktuelle Sexualregungen als Traumanlasse," Ibid., pp. 596-602.
"Die Symbolschichtung im Wecktraum und ihre Wiederkehr im mythischen
Denken," Jahrb. f. Ps.-A., IV, 1912.
Das Inzestmotiv in Dichtung und Sage, Grundzuge einer Psychologie
des dichterischen Schaffens, Vienna and Leipzig, 1912.
"Die Nacktheit in Sage und Dichtung. Eine Ps.-A. Studie," Imago, II,
1912.
"Eine noch nicht beschriebene Form des Odipus-Traumes," Intern.
Zeitschr. f. arztl. Ps.-A., I, 1913, p. 151.
"Fehlhandlung und Traum," Internat. Zeitschr. f. Ps.-A., III, p.
158.
"Die Geburtsrettungsphantasie in Traum und Dichtung," Internat.
Zeitschr. f. Ps.-A., II, p. 43.
"Ein gedichteter Traum," Internat. Zeitschr. f. Ps.-A., III, p. 231.
-
RANK, O., and SACHS, H., "Die Bedeutung der Psychoanalyse fur die
Geisteswissenschaften." Grenzfr. d. Nerven- u. Seelenlebens, ed.
Lowenfeld, No. 93, Wiesbaden, 1913.
-
REIK, TH., "Zwei Traume Flauberts," Zentralbl. f. Ps.-A., III,
1912-1913, p. 223.
"Kriemhilds Traum," Ibid., II, p. 416.
"Beruf und Traumsymbolik," Ibid., p. 531.
"Der Nacktheitstraum eines Forschungsreisenden," Internat. Zeitschr.
f. Ps.-A., II, p. 463.
"Gotthilf Schuberts 'Symbolik des Traumes'," Internat. Zeitschr.
f. Ps.-A., III, p. 295.
"Volkerpsychologische Parallelen zum Traumsymbol des Mantels,"
Internat. Zeitschr. f. Ps.-A., VI, p. 310.
"Zum Thema: Traum und Traumwandeln," Internat, Zeitschr. f.
Ps.-A., VI, p. 311.
-
ROBITSEK, ALFRED, "Die Analyse von Egmonts Traum," Jahrb fur
psychoanalyt. und psychopathol. Forschungen, Vol. II, 1910.
"Die Stiege, Leiter, als sexuelles Symbol in der Antike," Zentralbl.
f. Ps.-A., I, 1910-1911, p. 586
"Zur Frage der Symbolik in den Traumen Gesunder," Ibid., II, p. 340.
-
ROHEIM, G., "Die Urszene im Traume," Internat. Zeitschr. f.
Ps.-A., VI, p. 337.
-
SACHS, HANNS, "Zur Darstellungstechnik des Traumes," Zentralbl. f.
Ps.-A. I, 1910-1911.
"Ein Fall intensiver Traumentstellung," Ibid., p. 588.
"Traumdeutung und Menschenkenntnis," Jahrb. f. Ps.-A., III, 1911, p.
568.
"Ein Traum Bismarcks," Intern. Ztschr. f. arztl. Ps.-A., I, 1913, H.
I.
"Traumdarstellungen analer Weckreize," Ibid., p. 489.
"Das Zimmer als Traumdarstellung des Weibes," Internat. Zeitschr. f.
Ps.-A., II, p. 35.
"Ein absurder Traum," Internat. Zeitschr. f. Ps.-A., III,.p. 35.
-
SADGER, J., "Uber dass Unbewusste und die Traume bei Hebbel," Imago,
June, 1913.
-
SCHROTTER, KARL, "Experimentelle Traume," Zentralbl. f. Ps.-A.,
II, 1912, p. 638.
-
SCHWARZ, F., "Traum u. Traumdeutung nach 'Abdalgani an Nabulusi',"
Zeitschr. d. deutsch. morgenl. Ges., Vol. 67, 1913, No. 3, pp.
473-493.
-
SECKER, F., "Chines. Ansichten uber den Traum," Neue metaph.
Rdschr., Vol. 17, 1909-1910, p. 101.
-
SILBERER, HERBERT, "Bericht uber eine Methode, gewisse symbolische
Halluzinations-erscheinungen hervorzurufen und zu beobachten,"
Jahrb. Vol. I, 1909.
"Phantasie und Mythos," Ibid. Vol. II, 1910.
"Symbolik des Erwachens und Schwellensymbolik uberh." Ibid., III,
1911.
"Uber die Symbolbildung," Ibid.
"Zur Symbolbildung," Ibid., IV, 1912.
"Spermatozoentraume," Ibid.
"Zur Frage der Spermatozoentraume," Ibid.
-
SPIELREIN, S., "Traum vom 'Pater Freudenreich'," Intern. Ztschr.
f. arztl. Ps.-A., I, 1913, p. 484.
-
SPITTELER, KARL, "Meine fruhesten Erlebnisse. I, Hilflos und
sprachlos. Die Traume des Kindes," Sudd. Monatsh., October, 1913.
-
STARCKE, AUGUST, "Ein Traum, der das Gegenteil einer Wunscherfullung
zu verwirklichen schien, zugleich ein Beispiel eines Traumes, der
von einem anderen Traum gedeutet wird," Zentralbl. f. Ps.-A., II,
1911-1912, p. 86.
"Traumbeispiele," Internat. Zeitschr. f. Ps.-A., II, p. 381.
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STARCKE, JOHANN, "Neue Traumexperimente in Zusammenhang mit
alteren und neuren Traumtheorien," Jahrb. f. Ps.-A., V, 1913, p. 233.
-
STEGMANN, MARG., "Darstellung epileptischer Anfalle im Traume,"
Intern. Zeitschr. f. arztl. Ps.-A., I, 1913.
"Ein Vexiertraum," Ibid., p. 486.
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STEKEL, WILHELM, "Beitrage zur Traumdeutung," Jahrbuch fur
psycho-analytische und Psycho-patholog. Forschungen, Vol. I. 1909.
Nervose Angstzustande und ihre Behandlung, Vienna-Berlin, 1908,
2nd edition, 1912.
Die Sprache des Traumes. Eille Darstellung der Symbolik und
Deutung des Traumes in ihren Beziehungen zur kranken und gesunden
Seele fur Artze und Psychologen, Wiesbaden, 1911.
Die Traume der Dichter, Wiesbaden, 1912.
"Ein prophetischer Nummerntraum," Zentralbl. f. Ps.-A., 11,
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"Fortschritte der Traumdeutung," Zentralbl. f. Ps.-A., III,
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"Darstellung der Neurose im Traum," Ibid,, p. 26.
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SWOBODA, HERMANN, Die Perioden des menschlichen Organismus, Vienna
and Leipzig, 1904.
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TAUSK, V., "Zur Psychologie der Kindersexualitat," Intern. Zeitschr.
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"Zwei homosexuelle Traume," Internat. Zeitschr. f. Ps.-A., II, p.
36.
"Ein Zahlentraum," Internat. Zeitschr. f. Ps.-A., II, p. 39.
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TFINKDJI, JOSEPH, ABBE, "Essai sur les songes et l'art de les
interpreter (onirocritie) en Mesopotamie," Anthropos, VIII, 2s. 3d.,
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TOBOWOLSKA, JUSTINE, "Etude sur les illusions de temps dans les
reves du sommeil normal," These de Paris, 1900.
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VASCHIDE, N. Le Sommeil et les reves, Paris, 1911, Bibl. de
Philos. scient. (66) (Contains bibliography of other titles by the
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AND PIERON, La psychol. du reve au point de vue medical, Paris.
1902.
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VOLD, J. MOURLY, Uber den Traum, Experimentell-psychologische
Untersuchungen, ed. O. Klemm, Vol. I, Leipzig, 1910; Vol. II, 1912.
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WEISS, EDOARDO, "Totemmaterial im Traume," Internat. Zeitschr. f.
Ps.-A. II, p. 159.
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WEISS, KARL, "Ein Pollutionstraum," Internat. Zeitschr. f. Ps.-A.,
VI. p. 343.
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WEYGANDT, W., "Beitr. z. Psychologie des Traumes," Philos.
Studien, Vol. 20, 1902, pp. 456-486.
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WIGGAM, A., "A Contribution to the Data of Dream Psychology,"
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WINTERSTEIN, ALFR. V., "Zum Thema: 'Lenkbare Traume'," Zentralbl. f.
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-
WULFF, M., "Ein interessanter Zusammenhang von Traum, Symbolhandlung
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No. 6.
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THE END
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